National Defence committee  I don't know whether I get the question. Can you please try to specify it?

National Defence committee  If I have it right, the THW has increased the level of service. If you join the THW, you are a part of the federal government, and society recognizes you as part of the government. I don't mean as a member of Parliament or whatever, but you have a special status for the government.

National Defence committee  We do have some volunteers who are working permanently as paid staff for the military. There are maybe about a thousand of them. The volunteers from our side are supporting the military. We do jobs that the military has to do in other countries. We free up space for the military to fulfill their original tasks.

National Defence committee  There are two different things. In the training centres, there are trainers, paid staff from the federal budget, and there are members of THW. They are supported by volunteers, as well. If we do training, for example, for bridge building, there's an instructor, maybe two engineers and maybe about five to 10 volunteers supporting the training.

National Defence committee  It's more or less the same as in Canada. The responsibility for civil protection—like the fire brigade and paramedics—falls under the German Länder, such as Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and so on. There are 16 Länder. The federal government is responsible for civil defence, which means in war time.

National Defence committee  No, they fulfill the requirements. Since this is a long-standing process, it's quite clear that the THW has, for example, the bigger and heavier machines, and the long-lasting equipment. We can do longer missions. If the fire brigade has a special problem or technical issue....

National Defence committee  There's basic training, which is mandatory for every THW member. It's 120 hours of theory and practical training. Once they fulfill this training with an examination, they can go into one of the units. It depends on the unit whether it's bridge building, water purification, infrastructure or whatever.

National Defence committee  It depends. When we talk about how THW is financed, we get about €350 million a year from the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community as a budget for THW. I have to admit I don't know how much money the local governments have for their organizations, like the fire brigade.

National Defence committee  Let's do the second question first. When we have bigger disasters, of course, neighbouring countries like France or Luxembourg give us some offers of help. We had a lot of injured people, so Luxembourg sent paramedic cars, brought some of the injured people to Luxembourg and treated them.

National Defence committee  It's a federal law. It's called the THW law. The employers have to release the people when we need them. Of course, they get a reimbursement for the time they spend with us—two days—and couldn't go to their normal work. The employer can charge us for this time.

National Defence committee  We have beepers. We have our own messenger service, which is a purely THW messenger service. They get a call. The fire brigade or the police station can push a button. Their beeper goes off, and then they know where to go.

National Defence committee  To answer the first question as to whether they get incentives, they wouldn't have incentives in the form of money or whatever. Of course they get a medal when they do something special. Of course they get recognized by the media, and they have a social status within their communities because it's quite a tradition, as I said before.

National Defence committee  The military in general in Germany is really the last resort. If there's a big disaster like the Ahrtal, the military comes to support, or if there's a big flood like in 2013 in eastern Germany, but there is a very well-balanced coordination system between the federal government and German Länders about when and how the coordination starts and which organization has to fulfill which task, and they train together.

National Defence committee  No. There's a big range of different occupations, so there are a lot of tasks they can fulfill. There are engineers. There are lawyers. There are truck drivers. There are installers, plumbers, joiners, whatever. There is everything you can find within these 85,000 people. They are all in the data bank.

National Defence committee  May I correct you a little bit? It's not paramedic. We are the technical organization. We do have paramedics, but not in our organization. How do we recruit? Of course, the volunteer system in Germany is a quite traditional system. With THW, you can start at age six years. It's like the Boy Scouts.