EUROMIL observed in the past months and years that European armed forces are reducing the numbers of their personnel and / or have problems to recruit enough young people to fill their ranks.

In autumn 2020, EUROMIL decided to take a step back and analyse the underlying political and military reasons for setting the desired numbers of military personnel and the role professional associations and trade unions are playing in this regard.

In order to gain a complete overview of the situation in Europe and the involvement of EUROMILs members, member associations were asked to fill in a survey. 16 associations from 15 different countries completed the survey. The results are summarised in this paper.