Denmark wants to increase the number of young people doing military service by extending conscription to women and increasing the time of service from four months to 11 months for both genders, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Wednesday.
“We do not rearm because we want war. We are rearming because we want to avoid it,” Frederiksen told a news conference.
She said the government wants ”full equality between the sexes.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
Denmark has up to 9,000 professional troops on top of the 4,700 conscripts undergoing basic training, official figures showed.
The government wants to increase the number of conscripts by 300 to reach a total of 5,000.
The country is a member of the NATO alliance and a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion.
Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Lars Lokke Rasmussen said that “Russia does not pose a threat to Denmark.”
“But we will not bring ourselves to a place where they could come to do that,” Lokke Rasmussen said.
All physically fit men over the age of 18 are called up for military service, which lasts about four months. However, because there are enough volunteers, there is a lottery system, meaning not all young men serve.
Last year, there were 4,717 conscripts in Denmark. Women who volunteered for military service accounted for 25.1 percent of the cohort, official figures showed.
Danish Minister of Defense Troels Lund Poulsen said the new system would require a change in the law, which he said would happen next year and take effect in 2026.
The security policy situation in Europe “has become more and more serious, and we have to take that into account when we look at future defense,” Lund Poulsen said.
“A broader basis for recruiting that includes all genders is needed,” he said, adding that it would will create “a more versatile and more complete defense.”
Under the plan for which there likely is a majority in the Danish parliament, conscripts would first spend five months in basic training, followed by six months in operational service along with supplementary training.
In 2017, Sweden instituted a military draft for both men and women because the Swedish government spoke of a deteriorating security environment in Europe and around Sweden.
The Scandinavian country had previously abolished compulsory military service for men in 2010, because there were enough volunteers to meet its military needs. It never had a military draft for women before.
Norway in 2013 introduced a law applying military conscription to both sexes.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
RSS