Europe’s Citizen Soldiers
Countries facing a resurgent threat from Russia are set to spend hundreds of billions on military gear — and they’re turning to part-timers, conscripts and reserves to rebuild their armies.
In fatigues and body armor, Matthieu dives to the concrete floor and fires off a volley from his rifle, watched by half a dozen recruits in safety goggles and helmets. A 26-year-old strategy consultant at IBM Corp. in Paris, Matthieu has taken a few days out from working on digital business projects to demonstrate how to shoot the Famas assault rifle, the French Army’s standard-issue weapon, at a military shooting range in the picturesque hills near the eastern city of Besançon.
After six years of training, Matthieu is now a second lieutenant in the 19th Engineer Regiment, commanding a platoon of 30 reservists, part-time soldiers who sign up to support France’s 210,000-strong professional military. Like others Bloomberg interviewed for this story, he is being identified using his first name only, in accordance with French military policy. “I do this for my country,” he said. “And as a reservist, I do my best to ensure we are ready.”
France’s reserve forces have been pivotal to its military policy for centuries, serving in the Napoleonic wars and both World Wars. As Europe reacts to a growing threat to its security from Russia and the possibility that the US may reduce or renege on its commitments to defend its allies, France is once again turning to its citizen-soldiers. Over the next decade, the French government plans to more than double the number of reservists to 105,000, with one part-timer for every two active military members.
Over the next few years, European countries will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on aircraft, artillery, armored vehicles, drones and fortifications. However, the rush to rebuild militaries that have shrunk over decades of underinvestment has exposed a major challenge.
Almost without exception, Europe’s largest militaries face significant shortfalls in personnel, as demographic change, economic factors and long-term shifts in attitudes towards service weigh on their ability to recruit and retain soldiers. Some governments are raising wages, others are trying to invoke a sense of crisis or patriotic duty. Some have even reinstated or extended the draft, marking a profound change to the social contract.
In the three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the shape of the war has evolved into a duel of constant innovation and high-technology in the air and cyberspace, and into grinding trench warfare on the ground. It is a throwback to a kind of conflict — between two peer nations fighting on European soil — that Europe’s militaries largely stopped planning for after the end of the Cold War.
“What we see is that the fighting conforms quite closely to what we’ve known about attrition since before the First World War,” Alexandr Burilkov, assistant director for research at the Globsec GeoTech Center think tank, said. “Both sides are regularly taking serious casualties.”
As well as increasing their defense budgets, European countries are trying to recruit personnel in large quantities. Germany’s top general said in February that the military may need to add another 100,000 active duty soldiers to its current 180,000. Poland plans to grow its forces from 208,000 to 230,000 this year, and eventually to 300,000 professional soldiers and 150,000 reserves. The Dutch government has said it wants to more than double its military personnel from 70,000 to 200,000, including reserves, by 2030.
Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 rang alarm bells for Donatas Giknius. “We didn’t know how quickly and how wide the war could spread,” Giknius, a marketing professional from the capital of Vilnius, Lithuania, said.
First, he tried to volunteer for the Lithuanian armed forces, but with hundreds of others signing up at the same time he couldn’t get a slot. Instead, he called the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union, a government-backed volunteer corps that prepares citizens for armed and non-violent resistance.
The riflemen normally finance their own uniforms, weapons and ammunition. When Giknius joined, there was no market for guns in Lithuania, and he had to cross over to Poland to buy one. “I honestly thought there would be a war in 2015 or 2016 and we’d have to fight in Vilnius,” he said. “I didn’t want to fight with bare hands, so in January of 2015, I was in Bialystok buying a weapon.”
Recruits train around their jobs on evenings and weekends, with two weekends a month given over to shooting drills. Giknius said it took about five years to learn combat skills, but now, at 45 years old, he heads a company of 250 fellow riflemen. In the event of war, they essentially become regular soldiers — to refuse to serve would legally be desertion — adding to the country’s 12,400-strong army.
Lithuania reintroduced conscription in 2015. Each year, 3,900 men aged between 18 and 26 are called for nine months of mandatory military training. Like its Baltic neighbors, it has dramatically increased its defense budget, aiming to spend more than 5% of GDP in 2026. By 2030, the country wants to have 18,000 full-time troops, backed by 50,000 in active reserve. To get there, it will need to push conscription numbers to something close to universal military service.
According to a report by the national audit office, the number of volunteers for military training — people who didn’t wait to be called for conscription, but chose to undergo it — rose by 41% last year. However, more than half of conscripts were declared unfit for service, 40% of those, for “mental health disorders and psychological problems.” The army has also struggled to retain higher-ranking servicemen, with many officers and non-commissioned officers leaving due to a lack of career progression, the audit office found.
Lithuania’s recent history of Soviet rule has proved a powerful motivator for volunteers. Since 2014, the number of active volunteers in the Riflemen’s Union has more than doubled to 17,000. Of those, 6,500 joined after the full-scale invasion, among them Lithuania’s former prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė. The government has tripled its financing of the organization. “No one wants to go back to the gulag. We know what it means to be free.” Giknius said. “We are on the front line, we’re on the edge. We feel the breath of the enemy up close physically. We have a small territory with few people, so universal defense is our only option.”
Armies know they need “mass” on the battlefield, and “surge capacity” — the ability to mobilize people quickly. But building that is proving difficult.
In March, an official German government report into the state of the army found that 28% of positions in the enlisted ranks, and 20% of officer ranks were unfilled. In the UK, where the regular army has shrunk from 110,000 in 2010 to around 73,000 in 2025, the forces have turned to private sector recruitment companies to try to recruit enough people to maintain numbers.
Shortages of willing and able recruits are not a uniquely European problem. Most branches of the US military have consistently failed to meet their recruitment targets for years. A recent report found that less than a quarter of American 17-25 year-olds are eligible to serve without being granted a waiver for health problems, past drug use, low educational attainment, criminal records or other issues. China has reportedly found it difficult to convince young citizens to choose military careers over the private sector, and, like Europe, its population is aging and shrinking.
“We have pretty good research coming out of the UK that helps us understand what people value in military service,” Linda Slapakova, research leader at the RAND Europe think tank, said “Frankly, patriotism, or helping defend the country doesn’t feature as much.” Other factors, such as the skills they learn, job security, housing and the opportunity for adventure tend to predominate. “In a way, it’s a job like any other,” Slapakova said. “It’s a unique job, but it is a job.”
The problem is that it’s often not a very well-paid job, particularly given the skills required to do it well. Nor does it offer long-term employment for most recruits. In Spain, the military has shrunk by 10% since 2010, mainly because, experts said, military careers pay badly, end at 45, and are not competitive with the private sector.
Note: Salaries have been converted to US Dollars from local currencies.
“We have seen how in the last few years highly trained officers have joined companies such as Amazon or security companies … Remuneration is completely out of date,” Sub-Lieutenant Ignacio Unibaso, secretary general of the Spanish military association AUME, said. “Currently a soldier earns around €1,150… This same soldier, who earns that amount of money, is put to drive a weapons system such as a tank, a Leopard, which is worth about €15 million.”
Reserve forces — trained, part-time soldiers and specialists — offer a potential solution for armed forces struggling to recruit professionals. Reservists can fulfil a number of roles, serving in the infantry, running logistics, or bringing specialities such as medical training or technology skills that the military would struggle to pay competitive rates for.
Positions in the reserves are an easier sell for people who can’t or won’t commit to a full military career. “When we look at data for why people are joining the reserves, it can be: ‘I want to help defend my country,’ but it is more often than not going to be: ‘I want to enhance my skills,’” Slapakova said. “It’s factors that will be much less alien to people.”
Luan, who was among the reservists learning to shoot in Besançon, is a 20-year-old student in his third year at university. He enlisted in the reserves before the Trump administration shook the European defense establishment. “I signed up to support France and out of patriotism, but it wasn’t specifically to fight,” he said. “I can bring other things to the army.”
He sees the reserves partly as a way into a career in the defense industry. Luan is studying engineering and robotics, and has already completed a short internship at the aerospace and defense company Safran SA, working with a team developing drones. Gaining skills and experience in the reserve forces, including learning how drones are used in the military, might help him stand out in a competitive job market, and secure a full-time position at Safran, Thales SA or Dassault Systemes SE. “It’s also good for your CV,” he said. “It shows discipline and commitment.”
While other countries in Europe have set out plans to increase the size of their regular forces, or reinstated national military service, France — with a large regular military and its own nuclear deterrent — has focused on its reserves. Any French citizen aged 17 to 72 can become a reservist, making them liable to be called up for combat missions in France or abroad, to protect civilian and military sites, or to contribute specific expertise in areas such as cyber-security or logistics.
In May, as European leaders held frantic talks about how to guarantee their security should America withdraw its aegis, President Emmanuel Macron gave a televised address to the nation, in which he sternly declared that “the homeland needs you.” Over the next 20 days, more than 7,500 candidates enlisted as reservists. “We had planned to do some advertising, but we’re not going to do it because we have so many volunteers,” Colonel Rémy, deputy to the army reserves delegate, said in an interview.
For reservists, there is a financial incentive to sign up. New recruits earn on average more than €80 ($94) per day while they’re with the reserves, as well as free accommodation and food. If they move up in rank, the pay rises further. The government has signed agreements with more than 1,000 public and private sector employers to allow reservists to serve without losing pay. Since reserve missions are usually conducted on weekends and over the summer, Luan said he can treat it as a student job. “It’s a useful bonus.”
Luan said he isn’t fazed by the growing threat posed to Europe by Russia, or the concerns that the US might pull back from its commitments to help defend the continent from aggression. But, part way through his first two weeks of training, he admitted that military life does have its challenges. He has had to adapt to the army’s strict discipline. “We were woken up during the night and I didn’t know what time it was, given we don’t have phones,” he said. But there are advantages too, he added. “In my civilian life, I don’t shoot with assault rifles.”
In 2023, Latvia, which has a 285-kilometer-long border with Russia, reinstated the draft, taking the number of EU countries with some form of conscription to nine: Greece, Cyprus, Austria, and the Baltic and Nordic states minus Iceland. Facing acute recruitment challenges, lawmakers in other countries, including Germany, Poland and Italy, have discussed returning to national service.
A quick return to universal conscription is unlikely in most of Europe. But policymakers in several countries have pointed to a model pioneered in Sweden as a possible blueprint.
Source: Bloomberg News research
Sweden suspended conscription in 2010. At the time, its system, under which men over the age of 18 were liable for service, was criticized as being “ineffective on the battlefield, but also unfair,” said Sanna Strand, a researcher at the University of Stockholm. When the government wanted to reinstate the draft in 2018, “politicians and defense authorities had a lot of work to do in order to explain why this was being done.”
The system they designed tried to balance the need to recruit personnel with the expectations of a progressive European population. Rather than simply forcing all men to serve, they created a more selective draft. At 18, all Swedes — of any gender — fill out an enlistment form in which they are asked to declare their willingness to serve in the military, alongside questions on education and health.
Removing gender restrictions made a return to conscription more palatable to Swedish society and its parliament, while the selective nature of it made it feel competitive, rather than prescriptive. “Conscription in Sweden has been broadly framed as not so much a duty, but as an exclusive opportunity for those few who are selected to serve,” Strand said.
Only around 4% of 18-year-olds are drafted at the moment, but that is likely to rise as Sweden increases its alertness. As the number of people called to serve grows, the model could start to creak. “If the cohort is too large then this narrative about exclusivity, which justifies conscription in Sweden would of course, ring very hollow,” Strand said.
When Emmely Søgaard Hansen volunteered for military service in Denmark last year, it wasn’t a grand patriotic gesture but a spontaneous decision. She was tired of her job, and looking for something that would challenge her. By the time she completed her four-month training in the army, she felt ready to serve her country in the event of war. “What started as a personal journey of self-development turned into something much more meaningful,” Hansen said.
All Danish men over the age of 18 are currently eligible for conscription, but in practice very few are actually drafted because the spaces are filled by volunteers. Women aren’t yet obliged to serve, but many volunteer. In 2024, nearly 5,000 people began military service, almost a quarter of them women.
As Denmark increases military spending and preparedness, it is expanding the draft.
For the first time, women will soon be obliged to register for potential conscription. Girls turning 18 after June 30 will be assessed for service, and may be drafted if not enough volunteers come forward.
Hansen, now 22, welcomes the change. Today she’s a representative on Denmark’s Conscription Council, advising political and military leaders on how to modernize conscription and make it more inclusive and diverse. “We have the same expectations of men and women in society — that they’re equally capable,” Hansen said. “So it makes sense that the demands should be the same as well.”
But being a woman in the military still means navigating a challenging culture. In 2023, more than half of female conscripts reported experiencing some form of unwanted sexual attention or harassment at least once during their service.
While Hansen hasn’t experienced harassment herself, she is frank about the cultural barriers. There’s pressure on women to overperform. Equipment, such as backpacks and belts, are designed for male bodies. Military-issued underwear is transparent and doesn’t come in a wide range of sizes. And while the culture is improving, it’s still somewhat characterized by locker-room humor, she said.
In an attempt to become more inclusive, the Armed Forces are buying uniforms in a wider range of sizes, are surveying women on their needs, and have created expert advisory committees. Conscripts already get taught about gender discrimination and appropriate behavior early on, and there’s a zero-tolerance policy to misconduct. While physical strength is still important to combat, the armed forces have recognized they need more than brawn. The new conscription policy emphasizes individual skillsets, and after their initial military training, conscripts may move into roles that suit their strengths, such as cybersecurity, logistics, engineering, or combat roles.
“The military is very broad. It’s not just about being an infantry soldier. There’s so much more to it than that,” Hansen said. “Diversity is a real strength in the military, and we see time and again that missions are carried out more effectively when there’s more diversity.”
There are major questions about whether or not conscripts have much value in modern war. “To make a proper infantryman takes a year,” Globsec’s Burilkov said. “In Germany, there was a proposal for three months of training to make it attractive. And I can tell you that soldiers like that will be essentially worthless from a combat perspective.” Conscription is at best a stopgap measure. Even Russia, which has had to keep ramping up its financial incentives for recruits, has been hesitant to send conscripts to the front, Burilkov said.
That means reinstituting conscription is more often than not a political, rather than a military decision. Superficially, national service seems like a simple, catch-all solution, and one that has often attracted more conservative political voices, who see value in it for defense, but also for instilling a sense of nationhood, patriotism and discipline into the population. In a political environment characterized by partisanship and mistrust of authority, conscription promises a sense of universal identity, solidarity and social resilience.
There’s not much evidence that it delivers on that promise. It’s hard to frame service as a duty and as an exclusive opportunity at the same time; and there’s a risk that forcing people to serve can undermine their trust in governments and institutions.
“It can’t be stressed enough how intrusive a conscription system is,” Strand said. It’s a paradox in a liberal society to demand people risk their lives for liberty. “That is a massive potential sacrifice that individuals are making, and it’s really difficult for politicians to ascribe meaning and make sense of that within contemporary European culture.”
At 60 years old, Dalila was among the oldest of the recruits training at Besançon. Most of the other reservists learning to shoot are younger than her children — she has five, two of whom are in the regular military: one in the navy, one in the army.
She worried that her age would prevent her from being accepted. Along with another sapper, she had to take a break from the shooting range to put on protective elbow pads, but clearly relished the exercise. “C’est le kif,” (total bliss) she said.
Dalila brings more than just motivation to the reserves. Born in France to parents who immigrated from Algeria, she enrolled in the Algerian airforce, flying French and Soviet-made aircraft on combat missions during the “Black Decade,” the civil war between the Algiers government and Islamist rebels. Once the war ended, she returned to France and to civilian life, gaining a masters degree in management and economy, and working for the government employment office, France Travail.
She has joined at the lowest rank — a mere “sapper” — in the engineers, but the demotion doesn’t concern her. “For me, it was quite normal to go back to zero, to learn new things even if I have a long experience in the military because the combat methods are completely changed today.”
Dalila said she had already decided to enroll in the reserves before Macron’s call for recruits. “For me, it is to protect and serve France, I do not make the difference between my two countries,” she said. “I know terrorism well, I’ve seen it before, I’ve experienced it before. I don’t want my children to see what I saw. This is what motivated me.”