France Creates Voluntary Military Service as Europe Faces Russian Threat

PARIS — France on Thursday announced the creation of a paid, voluntary military service for young adults, becoming the latest European country to beef up its armed forces in the face of perceived threats from Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The move sharpened a growing debate in France, which has enjoyed decades of stability since the end of World War II, about how to prepare a population no longer accustomed to war for a new era of increased military peril.

The announcement by French President Emmanuel Macron came days after the French army chief set off a national uproar for saying that the country must accept the possible loss of its children in a potential future conflict.

“There is a generation ready to stand up for their country, and our military is the natural outlet for this desire to serve,” Macron said in a speech at a mountain infantry base in Varces-Allières-et-Risset, a small town in the French Alps, in southeastern France.

“In this uncertain world where force prevails over law and war is a reality, our nation cannot be afraid, ill-prepared or divided,” he added.

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France, where military conscription was eliminated in 1997, is following in the footsteps of other European countries that were alarmed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and that have accused the Kremlin of waging “hybrid warfare” against them.

Croatia restored conscription this year, nearly two decades after abolishing it. In Poland, there are efforts to make a form of military training available for every adult man. Denmark has begun drafting women. In Germany, parliament is set to debate a bill to increase military recruitment. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, former Soviet states, all have variations of a draft.

While Macron did not explicitly mention Russia in his speech, he said that “at a time when all our European allies are moving forward in the face of a threat that weighs on us all, France cannot remain immobile.”

A poll published by Odoxa, a polling firm, on Thursday found that 79% of French people approved of the voluntary military service, and some politicians supported the idea.

But others are reluctant to push France closer to a war footing, after decades of relative calm and prosperity that have conditioned generations of French to the rhythms of peacetime life.

“The president has nothing better to offer young people than to prepare them to die for his wars,” Manon Aubry, a lawmaker in the European Parliament for the far-left France Unbowed party, said on social media. She criticized the monthly stipend that volunteers will receive — 800 euros (about $925), according to French news media — for being “less than the minimum wage.”

The voluntary service is expected to last 10 months, including one month of training. As well as the stipend, volunteers will receive uniform and gear, Macron said — but they will not be deployed abroad. He did not give a specific age limit but he said he hoped the bulk of volunteers would be 18 or 19 years old.

At the end of their service, volunteers will be able to join the active army or the military reserve. Macron said that parliament could make the service mandatory in the event of a major crisis, but he insisted that would be exceptional.

France’s army, with 200,000 active personnel and about 45,000 reservists, hopes to enroll 3,000 volunteers next year and 50,000 over the next decade.

Echoing previous comments by top French military officials, Gen. Fabien Mandon, the French army chief, warned a gathering of mayors this month that Russia appeared to be preparing for a confrontation as soon as 2030. Local officials should spread the word and encourage young people to enlist, he added.

“We have all the knowledge, all the economic and demographic strength to dissuade the Moscow regime from trying its luck further afield,” he said. But what France lacks, he added, is “the spirit that accepts that we will have to suffer to protect what we are.” If the country “wavers because we are not ready to accept losing our children,” then “we are, indeed, at risk,” he said.

Some politicians criticized Mandon for being unnecessarily alarmist and belligerent. Macron defended him in a radio interview this week, arguing that his comments had been distorted and that French people were not about to be sent to fight in Ukraine. But “we must strengthen the pact between the army and the nation,” he said.

Even some of Macron’s critics agreed with that idea.

“Suggesting that an entire nation is committed to its defense is an important element of deterrence at a time when deterrence needs to be restored,” Olivier Faure, the head of the Socialist Party, told French radio this week.

Despite ballooning debt and deficit and persistent political turmoil, the French government has increased military spending in recent years and aims to grow the 2026 defense budget by about 6.7 billion euros (about $7.8 billion) compared with this year.