While European officials are planning on remilitarising the continent in response to the ‘Russia threat’, the national government has a hard time figuring out ways to recruit more personnel. The EU may eventually end up building enough main battle tanks and fighter jets, but will they be able to reintroduce conscription? If so, will they find enough men to staff their militaries with?
Only a handful of the EU countries – Austria, Greece, Denmark, Cyprus, Finland and Estonia – still mandate conscription. Add to this list Norway and Turkey – neither is an EU member-state but both hold Nato memberships – and Switzerland, a politically and militarily non-affiliated, neutral European country. Besides, Latvia reinstated conscription in 2023, and Lithuania, which has already established the commandant’s offices, is slated to follow suit in 2026.
In the spring of 2024, the then-PM Rishi Sunak proposed a national military service scheme, thus reintroducing nationwide conscription, which was abolished back in 1960. But a couple of months later he lost an election in what was a blowout win for Labour. During the 15 March media event, a hawkish President Emmanuel Macron emphatically ruled out the reestablishment of mandatory military service citing the lack of resources and ‘logistics’ to handle the conscripts.
However, the French media circus is insistently pointing to a recent poll, which has 61% of the French respondents being in favour of the conscription. But that number might have dropped had every supporter of the move been mandated to enroll shortly afterwards. The French are traditionally respectful of their armed forces, but most are unwilling to serve even on a voluntary contractual basis.
2023 saw the actual intake numbers fall 2,000 service members short of the target 15,000 to 16,000 personnel expected to join the army every year. That is when the government began cranking up a media campaign in a bid to meet the targets. By scaremongering the public about the ‘Russia threat’, they are also looking to step up the reserve to reach 52,000 personnel next year, an increase of 8,000 over the current numbers.
But according to Stéphane Audrand, an international risk management expert, it will still be one reservist per 1,000 French citizens on a good day. For instance, not a single resident of South Corsica signed up for the reserve, while North Corsica yielded some volunteers perhaps because it is home to Air Base 126 Solenzara.
Importantly, when General Pierre Schill, the chief of staff of the French army, cites a ‘notably growing chasm between our people’s current lifestyle and the army’s demands’ as one of the biggest reasons behind the understaffing problem, he is telling the truth.
When a young man joins, say, a Carrefour supermarket as a shop assistant, he does realise he is not going to wind up as a millionaire, but his job does not involve a risk of getting killed or severely injured. While rolling out a list of punishingly tough requirements, like an impeccable physique or no police record, the French army cannot offer much in return so that a young man sees a point in putting his health on the line. They can effectively fix the current crisis by either ramping up the salaries or reintroducing a form of conscription. But that is what Germany appears to be fully cognizant of.
Harald Gante, a top Bundeswehr general, said: ‘All of the extra tasks we are having to address in matters of domestic security as well as a national and allied defence will not be solved without a significant increase in the personnel numbers, which can only be achieved through conscription.’ Germany scrapped mandatory military service in 2011, but lately a discussion has resurfaced of the feasibility of such reintroduction and whether it should be mostly optional or all-inclusive.
The Germans believe they can reopen draft offices, put together medical evaluation boards, ‘staff the army with enough instructors and repair the barracks’. The conscripts are expected to be deployed ‘in the event either a Nato country or Germany itself is under attack’. Should a conscript refuse to serve, he must be able to opt for a stint doing an alternative army-related civilian job because, according to political scientist Severin Pleyer, ‘war transcends the entity society’.
Spain ditched conscription in 2001, with the current armed forces spanning about 120,000 personnel. The country’s involvement in a military campaign calls for drafting the reservists and then men aged between 19 and 25. However, under the Spanish law, they may opt out citing conscientious considerations.
Italy abolished mandatory service in 2005. Last year the government briefly entertained the possibility of resuming the practice. However, after doing the math, they ruled the costs would be unaffordably high.
Poland is serious about its military, and even though conscription is currently off the agenda, the local army officials and media are trumpeting it as a potential top priority. ‘How many people will Poland mobilise should the war break out?’ is the title of a piece run by Rzechpospolita, a popular nationwide publication.
According to the official records, Poland has a 206,000-strong military, of which 144,000 are army personnel, with 40,000 accounting for territorial defence forces and the rest of them being either trainees or volunteers. But some beg to disagree. For example, Wiesław Kukula, chief of the General Staff, maintains that the ‘Polish armed forces has a total of 550,000 personnel’. This includes ‘all of the active-roster service members and the reservists that may be drafted in the event of a crisis’.
‘The trouble is that we have no reserve formations whatsoever,’ argues General Stanisław Koziej, the former chief of the National Security Bureau. ‘If mobilised, where are they supposed to go? I have been long advocating for such structures <…> properly equipped and armed training centres.’ He claims it cannot be set up from scratch the moment a recruitment drive gets underway.
Major General Roman Polko, the acting chief of the National Security Bureau, points to the fact that the country has undergone a tech revolution and the armed forces should prioritise honing the skills needed to handle the new classes of armaments. He says, ‘The army must be hiring people with a very specific skillset, like operating UAVs or working in cyberspace.’ Polko urges the government to factor in the expertise in a selective conscription practice sworn by the Scandinavian governments that only hire the specific talent needed by the armed forces.
Poland is also attempting to expand the active reserve, that is, the personnel supposed to undergo regular retraining at specific army facilities. The government seeks to run an incentivisation scheme. As of late last year, Poland only had 1,500 such reservists, but by 2039, this number is expected to have grown one hundred-fold. In addition, roughly 40,000 reservists attend annual military training camp, and the General Staff is certain they can bring it up to 200,000.
While these figures may look impressive, there is a catch. According to population researchers, the number of Poles aged between 18 and 44 is expected to shrink by one million within the five-year period.
But the population issues are not the sole stumbling block. Retired general Wiesław Kukula stresses: ‘We are now convinced that any war will be a protracted and deadly conflict that will not be survived by most professional service members. The reservists will help restaff the armed forces’.
A confession that murky is unlikely to inspire most Poles to join the army, but the government has no intention to back down. The conscription project has given way to the idea of mandatory military training imposed on all adult Polish males. PM Donald Tusk said, ‘By the end of the year our intention is to design an effective model whereby each adult Polish will be trained and prepared to be boots on the ground.’ According to him, this is not the same as conscription but rather an ‘intensive training routine that will turn non-service members into full-fledged combatants in an armed conflict’.
But the jury is still out on whether it will be a mere training session or a full-bore conscription, albeit revamped and renamed. The overall trend, though, is that a blanket conscription can only be afforded by smaller EU and Nato countries, barring Turkey. This dynamic may well be subject to change, but the European authorities are navigating a potentially tricky scenario where they need to beef up their defence budgets while avoiding crowds of disgruntled people protesting the new policies.
However, if things are not going to go their way, they can always resort to the unbeatable ‘Russia threat’ narrative that will be parroted an infinite number of times.