On May 20, 2026, the German Cabinet adopted the framework points for the Civil Protection Pact (Pakt für den Bevölkerungsschutz). The pact commits €10 billion in investment in civil defence by 2029. It covers warning systems, emergency infrastructure, volunteer fire services, and civil protection in school curricula.
Germany’s security environment has changed significantly since 2022. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, increasing hybrid attacks on critical infrastructure, and the rising frequency of natural disasters have pushed the federal government to reassess how prepared the country actually is for a major emergency.
The pact brings together:
- Civil protection. This is the federal government’s responsibility under the Constitution.
- Disaster protection. This is managed by Germany’s 16 federal states.
Under the pact, the federal government will invest heavily and coordinate better with the states and municipalities to create a unified response system.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe, BBK) will lead the implementation.
NINA app will be improved for civil defence
The emergency warning app NINA (Notfall-Informations- und Nachrichten-App) will be expanded with recommended public shelter locations across Germany. If you already have NINA installed, you will have in-app access to where your nearest public shelter is.
The government will also complete the national siren network by 2027. By that date, all sirens across Germany will be centrally controllable in real time via the national warning system. This means that in an emergency, sirens can be activated simultaneously across the entire country from a central control point. They will no longer rely on local authorities to trigger them individually.
Where will the €10 billion civil defence investment go?
The €10 billion investment is spread across several areas:
- Modern equipment for the volunteer emergency services across Germany
- Strengthening of the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (Technisches Hilfswerk, THW) with resilient locations and new logistics centres
- Drinking water supply resilience
- Emergency power supply for critical facilities.
The government is also building a shared digital real-time situation picture for civil protection. This gives federal, state, and municipal authorities a unified information platform during an emergency so no one is operating from different data.
A new command staff (Steuerungsstab Kommando Zivile Verteidigung) will be established within the Federal Interior Ministry and the BBK to coordinate civil and military planning more closely.
Civil protection enters the school curricula
One of the more significant long-term commitments in the pact is that civil protection will become part of school curricula across Germany. Children will be taught what to do in an emergency. This includes how to respond, where to go, and how to help others.
New nationwide uniform training standards for emergency responders will also be developed at all levels, from local volunteer fire brigades up to federal units.
Germany has not had a major civil defence alert in recent decades, and most people living here have little sense of what to do if one occurs. The pact changes that picture significantly.
If you live in Germany, there are two immediate steps worth taking:
- Download the NINA app and allow location notifications. This is the official government warning channel for all major emergencies.
- Find out where your local shelter would be. Once the shelter mapping feature is added to NINA, this will be easy. For now, your local municipality is the contact for civil protection information.
NOTE: The Eckpunkte adopted by the cabinet are a framework decision, not a final law. Individual measures (e.g., funding allocation, school curriculum integration) require further legislative steps at the federal and state levels.
