As armed forces across Europe remain stretched and defense budgets limited, could European countries reinstate compulsory military service? NATO allies are considering conscription.
After the Cold War, European countries systematically downsized their militaries, with major players like France suspending conscription and seeing a corresponding decline in the size of its armed forces – by 38 percent from the 90s to the present.
Only Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey never suspended the service.
“Now, the most urgent thing is basically to have enough troops to hold the line, not necessarily to fight the Russians, but to send a strong deterrent message,” Dr. Alexandr Burilkov, a researcher at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, told Euronews.
This message would be: “If you try what you did in February 2022, it will not succeed,” according to Burilkov, citing the date of Russia’s complete invasion of Ukraine.
Burilkov is one of the co-authors of a joint analysis by the Bruegel think tank and the Kiel Institute, which estimates that Europe will need 300,000 additional troops to defend itself, on top of the current 1.47 million active military personnel, including those in the United Kingdom.
“In the last two years, the Russians have put their economy and society largely on a war footing,” Burilkov said, adding that “when done collectively, increasing defense capabilities is not an unfeasible expense, especially considering the consequences.”
NATO allies are currently discussing how to do this, both in terms of equipment and military personnel – and recruitment is part of the debate, a NATO official told Euronews, adding that to ensure effective collective defense in the current environment, more forces are needed to implement the alliance’s defense plans.
“How to generate these forces, whether to use the recruitment system, reserve forces or some other model, is a sovereign national decision made by the allies,” the same official said.
The transatlantic military alliance does not mandate national military policies, but can play a role in setting a demand signal and facilitating exchanges between allies. The official added that debates on best practices, lessons learned and NATO’s potential role in addressing recruitment and retention challenges will be high on the alliance’s agenda in the coming months.
Following Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, Baltic states such as Latvia and Lithuania have implemented different recruitment models to expand their armed forces.
Croatia also plans to reintroduce compulsory military service this year and more countries could follow, as intelligence services warn of a possible Russian attack on a NATO member state within five years and uncertainty grows over Donald Trump’s commitment to NATO and European security.
“In order to have resilient armies that can not only last in the initial stages of the conflict, but continue to fight if necessary, it is very necessary to be able to introduce any kind of system that would increase the amount of personnel available and increase the elasticity of that system,” Burilkov argued, referring to recruitment, as well as well-trained and efficient reserves.
Finland and Estonia have compulsory military service. Denmark, Lithuania and Latvia use a lottery-driven recruitment system, while Norway and Sweden have selective compulsory service.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but Carnegie Europe researchers argued in a 2024 policy paper that lessons can be learned from the Nordic and Baltic states. These countries have introduced various incentives to make military service more attractive, including financial benefits and job opportunities.
Lithuania, for example, offers financial support to those who voluntarily join the service, as well as employment and educational assistance during and after military service. And the Estonian Defence Forces works with private employers on programs such as the Forces Cyber Recruitment, where they send their employees to the cyber service to improve their skills and then apply them to their jobs.
“Many militaries are going through a kind of process of reconsidering which roles should be military and which roles should be civilian, because the nature of war and national security is changing,” noted Linda Slapakova, a researcher at RAND Europe.
However, not everyone agrees on the need to restore compulsory military service, an option legally impossible in some countries and politically implausible or practically impossible in others.
“Looking at the military alone, a lot is required in terms of training infrastructure, getting people through medical checks and registering people to do their training and service,” Slapakova told Euronews, noting that this kind of infrastructure does not exist in many countries.
“If the goal is just to improve the capabilities of the armed forces, I think there are many other issues that countries can look at before they start considering something like mandating young people to join military or civilian service,” she added.
A Gallup poll conducted last year found that only 32 percent of EU citizens would be willing to defend their country in the event of war.
In major EU economies such as Italy, Germany and Spain, the figures were even lower: only 14 percent of Italians, 23 percent of Germans and 29 percent of Spaniards said they would be willing to fight for their country in time of war.
