PARIS — After a hiatus of nearly 30 years, France is set to announce the reintroduction of military service on Thursday in a further sign that Russian President Vladimir Putin is remapping Europe’s security landscape.

Nuclear-armed France is the EU’s only military heavyweight with global reach, and a return to national service is a major political step. President Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce the measure — most likely a voluntary 10-month stint for both men and women — at Varces army base in the French Alps on Thursday.

While this is a mini revolution in France, the voluntary program represents a far lighter-touch approach to military expansion than in many Nordic and Baltic countries, where service is compulsory. Latvia and Croatia are the two most recent EU countries to reintroduce an obligatory term in the ranks.

The idea of reinstating military duty has consistently reared up in France’s public debate since the draft was terminated in 1997.

The left has called for a resumption to foster social cohesion and diversity, given that young people from different backgrounds have to work together in their units. The nostalgic right, meanwhile, has seen military service as a way to instill a sense of patriotism and respect for authority in the young.

Now, however, the rationale behind Macron’s plan is mainly military. France simply needs more manpower in the barracks given the scale of its ambitions and the growing threat from Moscow.

The French leader’s proposal “reflects young people’s desire to serve but, even more, the operational need for the armed forces to respond to the acceleration of perils,” an Elysée official told reporters on Wednesday.

With Europeans expecting Russia to pose a heightened risk to NATO by 2030, beefing up understaffed armed forces with trained personnel has become one of the main priorities for the alliance’s defense chiefs.

The French military is already the EU’s second-largest behind Poland, with more than 201,000 personnel. France has around 45,000 reservists and has pledged to reach 105,000 by 2035 — a target the voluntary military service plan is designed to help reach.

East-West divide

In France, the reintroduction of a voluntary service comes almost four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For those on Russia’s doorstep, however, the comeback of mandatory schemes has been a no-brainer and has followed the relentless pace of Moscow’s offensives.

After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Lithuania was the first to reintroduce compulsory military service, followed later by Sweden and then Latvia after Russia launched its war on Ukraine in 2022. 

“The primary objective is to reinforce military capacity from a quantitative perspective. The sheer reality is that when you face a national crisis or conflict, you need people roughly capable of responding with a basic level of skills,” said Linda Slapakova, a defense specialist at Rand Europe. 

Meanwhile, popular support for national service has soared, particularly in Nordic and Baltic countries. In Finland, which shares a 1,300 kilometer border with Russia, support for defending the homeland has reached record highs. In 2022, 83 percent of Finns believed in defending their nation, up from a low of 65 percent in 2020, according to the country’s yearly polling. 

But in the West, further from the existential threat posed by Russia, the conversation is a lot more complicated.

“The core of the issue these days is that countries sharing a border with Russia feel the threat much more acutely than others, who feel protected by their geography,” said Katrine Westgaard from the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank. “Finland, Baltic states, Norway, Sweden, Denmark have tackled this challenge for longer. There is more hesitation in countries like Germany, the U.K., France, and both geography and culture have something to do with that.”

In France, the military justification is straightforward: The army wants more soldiers. But the initiative is also about winning over hearts and minds, and raising awareness of the threats facing Europe. 

“With the war in Ukraine, the hardening of geopolitical tensions and the withdrawal of U.S. [troops in Europe], we need to strengthen the pact between the nation and the army,” said a person close to Macron, who was granted anonymity owing to protocol reasons. 

In other Western and Southern European countries, however, national conversations about military service have flickered and gone out quickly. 

In the U.K., where only a third of the British said they would be willing to go to war for Britain, the reintroduction of a national service was briefly proposed by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in 2024 before being buried by the current Labour government. 

In Spain, a country that has been criticized for refusing to sign up to NATO’s new spending targets, the revival of military service “hasn’t even crossed anyone’s mind” within the country’s left-wing government, Defense Minister Margarita Robles said last year.

Money and minds

In France, despite sharp increases in the defense budget over the past years, policymakers concede the country simply cannot afford to make military duty obligatory. 

Indeed, beefing up the continent’s armed forces to face a potential Russian aggression faces many challenges, including finding enough money and winning support from the younger generation.

“The armed forces are no longer equipped to supervise and accommodate the entire age group, meaning 800,000 young people. We no longer have the resources, we have given up the barracks,” the Elysée official mentioned above told reporters. In fact, the French government is hoping to enroll about 50,000 youngsters in the voluntary scheme by 2035 — about 6 percent of the targeted age group. 

Since the full-blown war in Ukraine began, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Belgium, Germany, Poland and Romania have also chosen voluntary schemes for now. 

According to the ECFR’s Westgaard, voluntary military service can be a tool to boost recruitment, but she notes that competitive benefits and pensions are also key. 

In Germany, volunteers will be paid €2,600 a month, a salary considered so attractive that the private sector fears it will lead to an exodus toward military service. By comparison, France is expected to provide up to €1,000 to its volunteers. 

Another problem is simply getting youngsters on board. 

A recent poll conducted by the ECFR shows that while a majority of Europeans favor reintroducing mandatory military service, Europe’s youth — between 18 and 29 years of age— are quite reluctant, even in frontline countries such as Poland and Romania.  

For decision-makers, it’s critical to make the case that their societies are at risk, said Panagiotis Politis Lamprou, a research fellow on EU institutions and policies at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, a non-profit research institute. 

“The message to the public should be that it’s about protecting our way of life and [that] being unprepared makes us vulnerable,” he said. “One of the most important challenges is the governments’ ability to convince their people why conscription may be necessary nowadays.” 

Hanne Cokelaere, Tim Ross, Aitor Hernández-Morales and Matt Honeycombe-Foster contributed to this report.