## Facts

- In 1996, Tanja Kreil, a German national, applied for voluntary service in the German armed forces (Bundeswehr) in a weapons-electronics maintenance role.
- Kreil met the qualifications for the position.
- Her application was refused because German constitutional and statutory rules barred women from military posts involving the use of arms, allowing women largely only in medical and military-music services.
- Kreil filed suit in the Administrative Court in Hanover (Verwaltungsgericht Hannover), arguing that excluding women from arms-related military posts conflicted with European Union equal-treatment law.
- The national court stayed proceedings and referred questions to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling on whether the German exclusion was compatible with Council Directive 76/207/EEC (Equal Treatment Directive) and its limited derogations.

## Issues

1. Do national measures concerning the organization of the armed forces, adopted for public-security reasons, fall outside EU law so that Directive 76/207/EEC does not apply?
2. If the Directive applies, may Germany rely on Article 2(2) (sex as a determining factor for certain occupational activities) or Article 2(3) (protective measures for women) to justify a near-total exclusion of women from posts involving the use of arms?

## Decision

- The ECJ ruled that measures connected with public security and armed-forces organization are not, as a class, outside EU law; where such measures regulate access to employment and working conditions, they fall within Directive 76/207/EEC.
- The ECJ held Germany could not justify a general exclusion of women from almost all military posts involving the use of arms under Article 2(2), because the derogation must be read narrowly and applied only to specific activities where sex is truly decisive by reason of the nature or context of the work.
- The ECJ rejected reliance on Article 2(3), concluding that a blanket ban on women in armed posts is not a permitted protective measure tied to women’s biological condition or maternity-related considerations.
- The Court concluded the German rules went beyond what was necessary for the stated public-security objectives and therefore breached proportionality, making the exclusion incompatible with the Directive as interpreted by the ECJ in the preliminary ruling.

## Legal Principles

- EU equal-treatment rules apply to armed-forces employment measures when those measures regulate access to jobs, training, promotion, or working conditions; public-security aims do not, by themselves, remove such measures from EU legal control.
- The Article 2(2) exception in Directive 76/207/EEC is limited: sex-based exclusions are allowed only for particular occupational activities where sex is a determining factor because of the nature of the tasks or the context in which they are carried out.
- Any departure from equal treatment must satisfy proportionality: it must be suitable for achieving the security objective and not go further than necessary, while seeking to reconcile security needs with equality as far as possible.
- A broad rule excluding women from virtually all posts involving the use of arms is too sweeping to qualify as a permitted occupational-activity exception.
- Article 2(3) does not authorize a general exclusion of women from armed posts; protective measures must be connected to pregnancy, maternity, or comparable grounds recognized by the Directive.

## Conclusion

In Kreil v. Federal Republic of Germany, the ECJ held that Directive 76/207/EEC governed Germany’s rules on access to military employment and that Germany’s near-total exclusion of women from armed posts in the Bundeswehr could not be justified under the Directive’s limited derogations; the national court was required to apply that interpretation and disregard conflicting national rules in resolving Kreil’s claim.


Kreil v. Federal Republic of Germany, Case C-285/98 (2000)