Name: Macron announces national service scheme to bolster armed forces | DW News
Uploaded: 2025-11-27T17:00:31.000Z
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French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a national service scheme to bolster the armed forces.

Macron says the service will begin next summer.

Volunteers aged between 18 and 19 will be given military training and will be active for 10 months.

Macron said the change is needed to deal with shifting security threats facing France.

Let's get more from DW correspondent Lisa Louie in Paris.

Lisa, what's Macron trying to achieve with this new voluntary service that's limited in size?

Well, as you said, this is not a compulsory scheme.

To start with next year, there will be about 3,000 young people, according to the plans, that will be able to sign up.

And in 2035, there could be 50,000 young people that will have signed, signed up to the service.

The President today said that this was a pact to strengthen the link between the population and the country's military.

He wants the military to reconstruct infrastructure across the country to accommodate all these young people.

And what this really is about is that the country, the government wants to recreate some kind of defence spirit to get people used to that new era we are in since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

I think President Macron wants to show that people really need to get used to the idea of war and also get trained up for it so that they could maybe be called upon as a resource, as reserve army in, in future years.

France's armed forces chief of staff sparked controversy last week by suggesting France must be ready, quote, to lose its children in any potential war with Russia.

What does that statement tell us about how prepared France is for this change in military service?

Well, it just shows that people really are not used to the idea of war, mind you.

You know, Europe was living on the so called peace dividend after the second, after 1945, where we were thinking that war in Europe would no longer be possible anytime soon or even in the future.

This statement showed that there were a lot of people opposed to that idea, that there was a huge backlash.

But according to recent polls, a lot of the French are also thinking that some kind of draft or voluntary service is a good idea.

And there was one specific poll that was done yesterday after first details of the new plans leaked to the press.

And that was testing how people reacted to that particular scheme that was put on the table today.

And three quarters of the French think it is a good idea.

So I think there is a certain sense within the French population that people need to get ready for the future, even if it's a grim future.

Lisa is this all a reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

I think very clearly so you know if you look across Europe there are about a dozen countries that now have some kind of some form of military service draft, voluntary or compulsory and a number of them have introduced these schemes since February 2022.

Mind you, many countries also between Iraq and Hard Place because they they lack the money like France that's lacking tens of billions of euros that is currently trying to find to bring down its budget deficit and that is certainly also one of the reasons why President Macron has not announced a compulsory service today because that would just cost too much money.

Mind you he said in his speech today that if there is a major crisis without actually defining what that crisis would be but in that case that voluntary scheme could could be transformed into a compulsory scheme here in France.