Ladies in Denmark at the moment are topic to conscription, following a change to the related regulation made by the nation’s parliament a couple of weeks in the past.
The transfer comes as NATO, of which Denmark is a member, will increase its navy readiness, citing a perceived risk from Russia after the escalation of the Ukraine battle in February 2022. On the bloc’s summit in The Hague final week, member states agreed to ramp up protection spending.
In Might, the European Union accepted a €150 billion ($171 billion) borrowing plan to help its personal navy buildup.
The Kremlin has persistently dismissed allegations of hostile intent towards Western nations as “nonsense” and fearmongering.
The newly adopted Danish laws mandates “full equality between women and men in relation to navy service.” It requires that “ladies who flip 18 on or after 1 July 2025 should… draw a [draft] lottery quantity and thus might be ordered to serve navy service if there will not be sufficient volunteers.” Feminine conscripts will serve below the identical situations as males.
The invoice additionally extends the obligatory service interval from 4 to eleven months, in accordance with media reviews.
Denmark’s armed forces depend on each volunteers and conscripts, who’re referred to as up when volunteer numbers fall brief. Roughly 4,700 Danes accomplished navy service in 2024, with ladies accounting for roughly 24% of that determine.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen unveiled plans to conscript ladies in March, framing the choice as a part of a push for “full equality between the sexes.”
Latvia, one other NATO member, is planning to conscript ladies by 2028. It reintroduced obligatory service in 2023 after scrapping it in 2006.
Norway and Sweden have already applied gender-neutral conscription, in 2015 and 2018 respectively.
German Protection Minister Boris Pistorius has additionally proposed reinstating the draft for males, which was abolished in 2011.
