The Future of Our Living Together
Tuesday Dialogue Series of the Einstein Center Population Diversity
In the framework of this digital event series, we discuss key questions related to the future of our societies in a circle of experts and interested stakeholders.
You are kindly invited to join our upcoming event:
Defence Meets Demography: The Future of Security and Emergency Response in Ageing Societies
Tuesday, 29 July 2025, 1-2 pm, CEST (Zoom)
(with German-English simultaneous translation)
Andreas Edel, Executive Secretary of Population Europe | Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Berlin and Rostock
Michael Gahler, Member of the European Parliament, Brussels
Christian Leuprecht, Professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and Director of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations in the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University, Kingston | Visiting Fellow at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, Brussels
Jennifer D. Sciubba, President and CEO of the Population Reference Bureau | Hess Center for New Frontiers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.
Robert Sieger, Major General, President of the Federal Office for Personnel Management of the German Armed Forces, Cologne
In five to ten years, the last cohorts of the baby boomers will reach retirement age, which means there will be fewer people of working age. This raises the question of how the human resource needs for security and emergency response can be guaranteed in the future. As skills shortages increase, potential candidates for the armed forces, for example, will also be highly sought after by the tech industry, the service sector and social and health care. In a nutshell: Will the security and emergency response forces run out of personnel in the coming decades? And how can Germany and Europe respond to these demographic issues – which also affect other countries, including the United States, Canada, China and Russia?