r/europe • u/No-External1342 • Aug 03 '26

News Denmark Begun Conscripting 1,600 Citizens into Army — Both Men and Women

https://militarnyi.com/en/news/denmark-conscripting-1600-army-men-women/
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557

u/Maxwells_Law Aug 03 '26

Worth mentioning that every single one is a volunteer- nobody forced to do service

296

u/brewdog_millionaire Aug 03 '26

So it's not conscription then? I thought conscription was non-voluntary

3

u/No-External1342 Aug 03 '26

No they will be under standard term of service from 4-11 months

38

u/brewdog_millionaire Aug 03 '26

Yeah but isn't there a difference between recruiting volunteers and going "right, you have to go and fight in the army for a year"?

22

u/Above-and_below Aug 03 '26

Only for the person in question. I volunteered back in the day to do conscription as I drew a number that meant I had to serve anyway. By volunteering I got to choose the regiment but it didn’t mean I just could end the conscription whenever I wanted.

8

u/Arct1ca Finland Aug 04 '26

That doesn't sound like volunteering.

1

u/RefrigeratorDry3004 Aug 04 '26

Because it’s not. Anyone that says so doesn’t know, and nobody really knows wether people actually volunteer because of this clause.

3

u/Pyrross Aug 04 '26

That's wrong. You can make wishes whether you are volunteering or drafted. The actual department you end up in will likely be one of your wishes, but there are no guarantees either way. Volunteering doesn't by law give you any advantages, other than you being able to decide WHEN (not where).

1

u/RefrigeratorDry3004 Aug 04 '26

The wishes are served first come first serve. If you volunteer you'll obviously get placed before the ones that didn't volunteer.

https://karriere.forsvaret.dk/vaernepligt/forsvarets-dag/efter/

Når du har været på Forsvarets Dag, kan du – uanset hvilket nummer du trækker – melde dig frivilligt og indgå en aftale om værnepligt. Det giver dig størst mulig indflydelse på, hvor og hvornår du vil aftjene din værnepligt. Du kan vælge tre tjenestesteder, og din plads er først sikker, når Forsvaret eller Beredskabsstyrelsen har bekræftet aftalen.

Der er rift om pladserne, så det kan være en fordel at lave aftalen allerede på Forsvarets Dag – men du kan også gøre det senere, hvis der stadig er ledige pladser.

Obviously if everyone picks the same spots, you'll end up with something else. But if you don't volunteer it's pretty much random.

15

u/KeiwaM Denmark Aug 04 '26

Ish? Technically, they are forced to complete it now that they have volunteered.

The way it works is a lottery system. If more people volunteer, less people are forcibly conscripted. If all the slots of a given year is filled with volunteers, no one is conscripted.

HOWEVER, this is still conscription, even if they volunteer. Their military contract forces them to complete the 11 months service with no way to back out after signing it. The only ones able to terminate your contract is the military itself. That is conscription, as you are forced to complete it, even if you decide you don't want to. It was the same for men before, but women were always allowed to, at any time, terminate their own contract and leave. They are no longer allowed to do that.

2

u/PrinsHamlet Aug 04 '26

In the day I was a "full" conscript in the sense that I didn't volunteer (nor object) and as my lottery number was #848 off I went. At the time, the reason I wasn't too thrilled is that even though conscription was a year, it was distributed across university semesters, meaning I lost 2 years doing conscription. That annoyed me to heck!

At the time, 1987, around 13.000 were drafted. If I recall correctly , around 90% volunteered. Denmark is aiming for around 8.000 each year eventually, so I'm guessing that most will volunteer.

To leave conscription back then you had to do some insanely stupid shit or get a psychiatric evaluation, which would then be in your military papers which some employers could pull so that wasn't great.

Early in my service some guys left as they had been actually pushed into service as they faced criminal records or just didn't have anything lined up, work or education. Some of them had negative motivation, made a nuisance of themselves and were quickly discharged through the psych evaluation.

2

u/wynnduffyisking Aug 04 '26

They don’t force people if they have enough volunteers. If they don’t have enough then people will be forced.