73% of French people would support introducing a voluntary military service.
A majority of French people are willing to support the introduction of a voluntary military service, which the country’s president Emmanuel Macron is due to announce soon. That’s what a poll carried out by the firm Elabe for the television channel BFMTV reveals.
According to the poll, 73% of French people are willing to support such an innovation, although it found much more support among people over 65, while respondents aged 25 to 34 were split 60% in favor and 40% against.
However, despite these signs of approval for the presidential initiative, the terms of how the voluntary military service would be carried out and its cost to the French budget have still not been made public.
According to information from the newspaper Le Figaro, the president could announce the introduction of the voluntary military service as early as Thursday. Sources for the paper said he could plan to recruit 10,000 to 50,000 people each year to serve in the French armed forces for 10 months. It is, however, specifically a voluntary service, not compulsory conscription, which was abolished at the end of the 1990s under President Jacques Chirac.
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