{"id":225474,"date":"2025-06-30T02:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T02:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/225474\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T02:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T02:11:10","slug":"involve-young-people-in-reshaping-military-service-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/225474\/","title":{"rendered":"Involve young people in reshaping military service \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>But it\u2019s a gamble. What if enough young Germans don\u2019t accept the offer of military service the way Norwegians so enthusiastically do? What if the Bundeswehr needs so many soldiers that being selected for military service doesn\u2019t quite resemble getting a place at Oxbridge? Would the government then force them to serve?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the Gordian Knot the defense minister must now solve, and the coalition\u2019s Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union on the one hand, and the Social Democrats on the other are divided on the issue.<\/p>\n<p>The U.K., which also wants to grow its military, faces recruitment challenges too. At the moment, its armed forces comprise <a href=\"https:\/\/commonslibrary.parliament.uk\/research-briefings\/cbp-7930\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">148,230<\/a> active-duty personnel, and they have fallen short of recruitment targets. Even though the armed forces have produced some truly impressive recruitment advertisement campaigns in recent years, the numbers refuse to leap.<\/p>\n<p>The issue is much the same in other European countries that don\u2019t have military service. Even some that do haven\u2019t managed to make the prospect of serving (including signing up for active duty after competing military service) quite as attractive as Norway does. One-quarter of Norwegian conscripts go on to active duty.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/13061172-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6831723\"  \/>Sweden and Lithuania joined Europe\u2019s ranks of national-service nations several years ago. | Artur Reszko\/EPA<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s a solution: Ask the teenagers.<\/p>\n<p>Discussions around military service naturally focus on what might work, what should work, how the youngsters might respond, how they can be incentivized to participate and much else. But the teenagers themselves aren\u2019t consulted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But it\u2019s a gamble. What if enough young Germans don\u2019t accept the offer of military service the way&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[64623,7668,473,7057,68102,2000,6562,299,1824,2597,1115,811,812,15,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-225474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-beyond-the-bubble","9":"tag-boris-pistorius","10":"tag-defense","11":"tag-defense-budgets","12":"tag-demographics","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-eu27","15":"tag-europe","16":"tag-germany","17":"tag-military","18":"tag-norway","19":"tag-security","20":"tag-sweden","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-youth"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114769892980643650","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}