Is conscription the answer to Europe’s security woes?

How best to boost troop numbers to deal with Russian threat is ‘prompting fierce and soul-searching debates’

Emmanuel Macron has said a new voluntary national service programme in France, due to be announced this week, is not about “sending our youth to Ukraine” to fight.

The growing realisation that Russian aggression could “easily spill into Europe” has put “intense pressure” on countries across the continent to “quickly expand the ranks of full-time soldiers and reservists that shrank during the post-Cold War peace”, said The New York Times.

“Yet the question of how to recruit hundreds of thousands of service members is prompting fierce and soul-searching debates.”

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France’s new national service plan “stops short” of full conscription, said France 24. Lasting 10 months, with volunteers paid for their service, it is “expected to start modestly”, recruiting 2,000 to 3,000 people in the first year, before “ramping up” with a long-term goal of 50,000 per year.

“Some countries in Europe already have a form of a conscription”, said The Times, notably those “closest to Russian borders” such as Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania. But the war in Ukraine, and the so-called “grey zone” activities carried out by the Kremlin such as drone incursions into Nato airspace, “have reignited the debate across the continent”.

In Poland, “plans are under way for every man to go through military training”, said The New York Times, as the government aims to more than double the size of its army to 500,000. In the hope of also growing its fighting force from 70,000 to 200,000 by 2030, Denmark recently expanded its military conscription programme to include women turning 18 who are entered into a conscription lottery. Croatia has gone further, voting in October to reintroduce compulsory military service, which was suspended in 2008.