The General Staff of the Armed Forces (EMGFA) today referred the decision on a possible return to compulsory military service to the government, but stressed that this hypothesis would not “solve, on an ad hoc basis, manpower management challenges”.
In a response sent to the Lusa news agency, the General Staff of the Armed Forces (EMGFA), headed by General Nunes da Fonseca, writes that “the possible reintroduction of compulsory military service in Portugal is a matter that should not be seen in a reductive logic of solving a shortage of personnel, but rather through a comprehensive approach to creating a national and universal service of a civic nature, aimed at all citizens”.
“This comprehensive approach is part of national policy and is not intended to solve specific challenges in the management of Armed Forces personnel,” the response reads.
The EMGFA recalls that, two decades ago, “Portugal moved from a model of military service that included conscription to a professional model based exclusively on men and women volunteering to serve their country through the Armed Forces”.
As part of the consolidation of the model of professionalization of military service in the Armed Forces, in recent years, the EMGFA continues, “it has been possible to guarantee concrete measures, such as the implementation of the Special Contract Regime, as well as the creation of permanent cadres in the category of squares in the Army and Air Force, which have reinforced the complementarity of the various forms of effective military service, in a model based exclusively on volunteering.”
The branch stresses that, with the aim of effectively fulfilling the missions of the Armed Forces, the professionalization model “implies the need to ensure that human resources are obtained, exist and maintained at levels of adequate sustainability and stability”.
“In this regard, the EMGFA, in conjunction and coordination with the branches of the Armed Forces, will continue to maintain a permanent dialogue with the Ministry of National Defense in order to pursue the adoption of timely measures that contribute to better recruiting, retaining and motivating personnel, specifically through the recognition of their merits and selflessness, as well as the revaluation of their careers,” they write.
This Friday, in an article in Expresso, the Chief of Staff of the Navy, Henrique Gouveia e Melo, said that it may be necessary to “rethink compulsory military service, or another more appropriate variant”, in order to “balance the expense/results ratio” and “generate greater availability of the population for Defense”.
This position was also shared by the Chief of Staff of the Army, Eduardo Ferrão, who, speaking to Expresso, argued that “a reintroduction of compulsory military service is worth studying and evaluating from various perspectives”.
Compulsory military service ended in 2004. Its end was approved in 1999 by an executive led by socialist António Guterres, with a four-year transition period.
The transition to professionalization was completed in September 2004, two months before the scheduled date of November 19, with centrist Paulo Portas as Minister of Defense.
