Belgium is introducing a voluntary military service programme for 17-year-old citizens. this was announced by Defence Minister Theo Franken during a discussion on 21 October at the European Policy Centre (EPC), according to Radio Liberty’s correspondent in Brussels.
“We will start with a year of voluntary service for young people. I will send a letter to every 17-year-old. This letter is already ready, it will arrive in November. That’s 130,000 people in Belgium. We invite them to join this service – it’s voluntary, it’s not compulsory,” the minister said.
Franken explained that such a move should help attract a new generation to the country’s defence without returning to compulsory service.
According to him, the popularity of military service in Belgium is now on the rise: “Defence is ‘on trend’ again. We broke the record for the number of people applying for service – over 10,000 last year. And this year, in September alone, the number is up another 10 per cent. We have a lot of young people who want to serve, and a lot of reservists.”
The minister also announced plans to change the rules for admission to the reserves to attract more specialists and make the system more flexible.
“I will abolish some age restrictions. Right now you have to be under 50 to be a reservist. But if someone is 52 and in great shape-why not? We have to be more flexible,” Franken said.
He gave the example of defence losing valuable specialists because of too strict criteria: “When you have a cyber warrior who weighs 200 kilos, eats a lot of Snickers and Twix, but he is the best in Belgium in his field and can’t enlist, it doesn’t make sense. We should let such people fight in cyberspace. You don’t have to run 10 kilometres in 40 minutes to defend your country on the internet.”
Franken also emphasised the importance of bringing in experienced professionals from the civilian sector who can help the army: “A man from my town, who spent his life in international procurement, wrote to me after he retired saying, ‘Theo, I want to help the army.’ But he was turned down because he was ‘too old’. It’s ridiculous. We must put an end to these absurd rules. We need everyone-especially people like this.”
The minister said his department would prepare proposals in the coming weeks to change the selection criteria and new programmes for reservists.
“We are already working on this in my office and with the defence headquarters. We must utilise the full potential of Belgians who are willing to serve,” he concluded.
In April, the Belgian government allocated an additional four billion euros for defence.
Thus, Belgium increased defence spending to 2% of GDP by the end of the year.