France brings back national service for all 16-year-olds

France, (Daily Mail), 28 June 2018 -  France is bringing back compulsory national service for 16-year-olds, fulfilling one of President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign pledges.  

Conscripts will be made to serve for one month, with a focus on civic service as well as military training, and the option of extending the placement of up to a year.  

Military conscript service was scrapped in 1996, leaving Macron the first ever French President not to have been drafted.  During his presidential campaign, Macron promised to make all young people spend a month getting ‘a direct experience of military life with its know-how and demands’.  

He billed it as a way to build social cohesion and patriotism in a country battling deep divisions, by bringing young people from different backgrounds together in barracks.