Macron unveils new French voluntary military service for 18 and 19-year-olds

French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a new national military service plan on Thursday as France seeks to bolster its armed forces to address growing concerns over Russia’s threat to European nations beyond the war in Ukraine.

Mr Macron announced that volunteers aged 18 and 19 will start serving next year in a new 10-month military service programme.

“A new national service is set to be gradually established, starting from next summer,” Mr Macron said in a speech at the Varces military base, in the French Alps.

“In this uncertain world where power prevails over law and war is an ever-present reality, our nation has no right to fear, panic, unpreparedness, or division.”

Young volunteers will serve in France’s mainland and overseas territories only, not in its military operations abroad, Mr Macron said.

The programme will start with 3,000 youth to be selected next summer and will gradually increase to 10,000 a year by 2030. France has ambitions to reach up to 50,000 volunteers per year by 2035, a figure that will be adjusted depending on the global context, Mr Macron added.

Volunteers will hold military status and receive wages and equipment. After one month’s training, they will be assigned for nine months to a unit in which they will perform the same missions as active military personnel, he said.

They will then join the military reserve and continue their education or start working. Those who wish will be able to start a professional career in the active military, Mr Macron said.

Earlier this year, Mr Macron announced his intention to provide French youth with a new option to serve voluntarily in the military. Conscription, which France ended in 1996, is not being considered.

Only under “exceptional circumstances” may parliament authorise enlisting those whose skills were identified during a one-day defence course, which all youths go through, and make national service mandatory for those people, Mr Macron said.

He explained then that France seeks to boost its defences as Russia’s war in Ukraine puts the European continent at “great risk.”

“The day that you send a signal of weakness to Russia – which for 10 years has made a strategic choice to become an imperial power again, that’s to say advance wherever we are weak – well, it will continue to advance,” he told radio RTL on Tuesday.

Mr Macron has announced 6.5 billion euros (£5.7 billion) in extra military spending in the next two years.

He said France will aim to spend 64 billion euros (£56 billion) in annual defence spending in 2027, the last year of his second term. That would be double the 32 billion euros in annual spending when he became president in 2017.

France’s military currently comprises around 200,000 active personnel and more than 40,000 reservists, making it the second largest in the European Union, just behind Poland. France wants to increase the number of reservists to 100,000 by 2030.

France’s new army chief of staff, General Fabien Mandon, last week sent a warning about the nation’s need to get prepared to “lose its children” in the event of a potential conflict with Russia – words that prompted an outcry across the political spectrum.

Russia annexed 20% of Georgia’s territory in 2008, Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Gen Mandon said.

“Unfortunately, Russia today, based on the information I have access to, is preparing for a confrontation with our countries by 2030. It is organising itself for this, it is preparing for this, and it is convinced that its existential enemy is Nato,” he said.

Mr Macron made clear the national military service volunteers would not be sent to the front line.

“We must, in any case, immediately dispel any confusion that we are going to send our young people to Ukraine,” Mr Macron said Tuesday. “That’s not at all what this is about.”

France is not the only European nation bolstering its military capabilities.

Germany is redoubling its efforts to attract more recruits, notably via a new voluntary military service. The plan remains to be approved by parliament.

Belgium’s defence minister sent a letter this month to 17-year-olds to encourage them to sign up for military service next year, with the aim to select 500 candidates between 18 and 25 to launch the programme in September.

Poland has recently started rolling out a new voluntary military training programme and aims to train 100,000 volunteers a year from 2027 as it seeks to build an army of reservists with worries about Russia growing. It is not considering a return to universal military service, but rather a reserve system.

Ten EU countries have compulsory military service: Austria, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden.

Norway, which is not a member, has mandatory military service for both men and women. The length of service ranges from as little as two months in Croatia to up to 19 months in Norway.