How to fix Europe's recruitment issues

Last week, we detailed Europe's recruitment issues amid shrinking troop counts: from insufficient funding and a hostile working environment to antiquated recruitment and a conspicuous lack of diversity. And today, we tell you how to solve them.

Darius Kölsch

1: Funding

With billions of euros sunk into equipment purchases, renovating and maintaining military infrastructure is equally necessary, so the barracks housing soldiers are not falling apart. This also goes for personal equipment, from rifles to socks, especially if armies seek to expand.

Increasing pay for soldiers is equally essential, as soldiers in most European militaries earn less than their civilian counterparts of the same specialisation – in one study of 11 countries, only three paid their soldiers at or above civilian pay. 

As soldiers often struggle to find civilian work after their service, militaries should forge better connections with the private sector and provide courses and other training to re-enter the job market. So it's not only funding militaries need – they also need to grow a lot closer to the societies they serve. 

2: Changing culture

Significantly harder is changing the culture in and around the military. This includes hazing and sexual assault (of civilians and fellow soldiers), a culture of silence, which prevents accountability, and above-average occurrence of suicides or suicide attempts by the affected. And, of course, frequent cases of right-wing extremism and extreme racism. Any one of these elements would be enough to dissuade many potential recruits, so it's in the interest of armies themselves to deal with them.

More accurately representing the society it ostensibly protects would boost morale and make armies more effective in equally diverse sets of situations. Unfortunately, this culture might prove difficult to change, since that same culture will have produced many in leadership positions. As this report by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism puts it: “policies aimed to create inclusion for ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities will only succeed to the extent that the internal culture supports these initiatives.” 

And so, here, like the hard factors, significant political will and effort to replace soldiers in key positions to change the culture will be necessary, along with a dedicated push by governments to make “zero-tolerance” policies actually zero-tolerance.

3: Jump-starting recruitment

But even if these problems have been solved, the public has to know about it for it to change recruitment numbers.

The most-discussed solution for the personnel shortage is conscription (for countries without it). Before reintroducing that, making the military a good place to work is all the more necessary to avoid the boosted social awareness post-conscription repulsing even more potential recruits.

In the same vein, conscription systems that are essentially voluntary, such as the Scandinavian systems – a competitive, gender-neutral, selective model – and the proposed German version, would further help increase recruitment numbers while avoiding blowback. Since many militaries have insufficient equipment as is, starting with low numbers of recruits is necessary anyway.

4: Engagement across society

All of the above solutions are important. But fundamentally, for recruitment to recover from the current crisis sustainably, people have to be convinced that what they are dedicating and, in extreme cases, risking their lives for is worth it. In other words, to ask people to give their lives for the country, their country should do something for them. Finland, for instance, a country that is held up as a model for modern defence practices, is one of the top social spenders, and has one of the most equal societies in Europe.

Unfortunately, Europe is currently in a time of significant political upheaval as a result of years of progressively worsening cost of living and housing crises (to name just two), problems that politicians have decidedly failed to address.

Before policy-nerds (which include myself) get too excited – I am not arguing that better policy will solve the problem. Better policy is necessary, yes. But what convinces people, fundamentally, are narratives. And currently, the most prevalent narrative that addresses the political issues is the foolish argument by the far-right that simply kicking out the foreigners will solve everything.

Of course, this is delusional (hello, Brexit!). But this narrative (and the millions in disinformation campaigns to support it) explains the rise of the far right compared to the centrist parties that are in power currently. Their consistent deferral to the right on issues from immigration to workers' rights, rather than proposing a true alternative narrative, helps explain the low trust in European governments.

What is needed, then, is a new, convincing narrative to rally Europeans behind, investing them in society and its wellbeing, by promising and delivering tangible progress in their everyday lives. Only then will people be willing to commit their lives to a country. 

Healthy, local, and out of reach?

You are what you eat. We've all heard that old pearl of wisdom. But what does it really mean to eat well? Organic, bio, low-carb, gluten-free, lactose-free, locally produced, vegan, vegetarian… It is easy to get lost in all the labels promising a "better" diet. 

Eli Volencova

In an ideal world, our food should be fresh, nutritious, varied – and have a low carbon footprint. Yes, that's right: About a third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are linked to food production. So, how can we find a healthy diet for our bodies and the planet?

 Nearly 60% of food emissions come from animal products; therefore, integrating more plant-based food into the weekly menu has the biggest environmental impact. The second common advice is to "eat local". But this is a much more complex issue.

 From the environmental perspective, choosing local food over imports is not such a game changer as one might expect. That is because refrigeration and food transport cause only a much smaller share of greenhouse gas emissions than the production itself.

 So, the key question is not "where" but "how" food is produced. Still, these can go hand in hand. The idea of eating local isn't just about reducing transport distance. It is rather about looking for alternatives to the industrial food system. 

Support your local farmer

In the EU, the agricultural sector has been retreating from more ambitious climate goals following last year's massive farmer protests and populist parties taking over the topic. For instance, the EU officially dropped the goal to halve pesticide use by 2030 and quietly abandoned the planned 30% cut in non-CO2 agricultural emissions by 2040. 

 Therefore, it's more important than ever to support local farmers who stick to more environmentally friendly practices and ensure the high quality of their food. 

Under the current system, small farms are disappearing from Europe and are being taken over by large concerns that often prioritise fast profit over anything else. The total number of farms around the continent more than halved between 2007 and 2022. Nearly two million small farms disappeared as it became increasingly difficult to run a family farm and make a living.

At the same time, the number of mega-farms almost doubled. They represent only 3% of all farms in the EU, and receive 37% of EU subsidies that small farms typically cannot access due to systemic hurdles. However, action on the local level can spark a rebirth of family farms. 

For example, in Besancon, a French city of around 120,000 residents. There, a municipality-supported facility invites interested people to become farming "trainees" – for up to three years, they can use land owned by the municipality to set up a sustainable small-farm business. Over half of the "trainees" succeed in becoming independent.

"To apply, you don't need to know how to garden as long as you have a plan and motivation. We have very different people participating in the project – individuals and also a collective of seven. Thanks to the nursery, they can experiment and slowly learn about farming while maintaining their other part-time jobs," Lorine Gagliolo, an elected representative in Grand Besancon, told The European Correspondent.

During a visit to the site, I met two aspiring farmers who share part of the land and two greenhouses in the nursery. They were busy taking care of their garden beds, but they proudly presented me with freshly cropped lettuce – a product of their first harvest. 

Neither of them had agricultural training in the past, yet with the nursery's help, they managed to set up everything in just a couple of months. Increasing self-sustainability and offering local people quality healthy food are their biggest motivations. 

They are slowly building a customer base with a subscription system. Families in Besancon can order baskets with fresh fruit and vegetables produced in the nursery. About 500 families buy these regularly, and the nursery also supplies the local school canteen. Besides that, there is a market in the nursery where customers can buy their food right at the source. 

If you can afford it…

The catch in the appealing scheme is the price – local products from small farms tend to be (much) more expensive than those from intensive agriculture found in mass-market supermarkets. While many prioritise quality, a large part of society still lacks the privilege to make this choice. 

In France alone, some 15% of the population (10 million people) regularly do not eat enough due to financial reasons. This sometimes leads to serious health issues, according to Madeleine Charru, co-founder of the Alliance for Food and Farming Transitions. It is not just a French problem; 9.5% of the EU population can't afford a proper meal every day.

Again, local activism is trying to battle this issue. For instance, Montpellier is France's first city to launch a food social security fund. The results look good: the beneficiaries spend 80% of the fund's resources on organic products coming mostly from local farms.