Previously it was conditional, only in effect “in the event of tension or defense” (machine translation), but they are very exceptional circumstances -- AFAIK not ever invoked since unification.

The change this year was to make it applicable regardless of those conditions: “Outside the tension or defense case, §§ 3 [...]” shall apply.

This is a significant change from the previous Cold War policy. I have talked about the definition of these terms in another comment, with another news article as source.