# Croatia votes to bring back compulsory military service after 17 years
Event date: 2025-10-24
Croatia’s parliament has voted to reintroduce compulsory military service, reversing a system that had been replaced by volunteer enlistment in 2008.
Lawmakers approved the change in an 84-11 vote, with 30 abstentions, in the 151-member chamber. According to the AP report, the revived service will last two months and provide basic military training. Public broadcaster HRT said the measure is intended to give young people skills and knowledge that could be useful in crisis situations.
The government has framed the move as part of a broader effort to strengthen preparedness in an increasingly unstable European security environment. The AP report links the decision to heightened tensions after Russia’s war against Ukraine and to a wider military buildup in the Balkans, a region that still carries the memory of the conflicts of the 1990s.
Croatia’s defense ministry said the aim is to help young people gain basic skills that would contribute to national security. The ministry’s message reflects a practical argument for the policy: the country wants a larger pool of trained citizens who could respond in emergencies, even if they are not serving full-time in the armed forces.
The change also retains a civilian-service option for conscientious objectors. That is likely to matter in a country that has spent years relying on a professionalized volunteer military and will now need to rebuild a conscription pipeline from scratch.
Authorities plan to begin calling up men born in 2007 for medical checks by the end of the year. Conscripts will receive a salary during training, which should help distinguish the new system from older-style draft models that often carried a stronger punitive reputation.
The move puts Croatia in line with a broader European reassessment of military readiness. Several countries on the continent have been rethinking reserve strength, mobilization speed and training capacity since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For Croatia, a NATO and European Union member, the vote signals that lawmakers see conscription not as a return to the past, but as a tool for future preparedness.
At the same time, the decision is politically significant because it marks a formal break from the volunteer-only model adopted in 2008. The parliament’s margin suggests that the policy enjoys a workable majority even if it is not unanimous. Croatia’s leaders are betting that the public will accept the return of a short, structured national service as a reasonable response to an uncertain security climate.
The coming months will show how quickly the defense ministry can turn the law into an operating system for recruitment, medical screening and training.
