Macron talks tough with military service pledge

French presidential frontrunner appeals to Right with vow to restore policy axed 20 years ago

EMMANUEL MACRON, the French presidential frontrunner, is seeking to bolster his law-and-order credentials with a proposal to restore compulsory military service.

Following a string of terrorist attacks, security is at the forefront of the election campaign and the centrist candidate announced the policy yesterday – a day after a known radicalised Muslim was shot dead in an attempted attack at Orly airport.

France abolished military service under Jacques Chirac in 1997, but Mr Macron said he would oblige young people to serve one month in the armed forces between the ages of 18 and 21.

“I want each young French person to be able to experience military life, even briefly,” Mr Macron said, arguing that the move would “allow our democracy to be more united and increase the resilience of our society”.

He raised the idea, which is not men- tioned in his election manifesto, as Marine Le Pen’s Front National renewed accusations that her rivals are “soft on terrorism”.

Mr Macron is predicted to face Ms Le Pen in the decisive second round of the election, which takes place in five weeks. The conservative candidate, François Fillon, who has been dogged by financial scandal, is expected to be eliminated in the first round.

Polls suggest Mr Macron, 39, will beat Ms Le Pen, 48, by a wide margin, but he will need to convince enough conservatives to back him without alienating his core supporters – young, urban liberals.

A former economy minister under the unpopular Socialist president François Hollande, Mr Macron has won the support of a handful of centre-Right figures.

But he was clearly rattled last week at the prospect of backing from allies of the president, including the former prime minister, Manuel Valls.

If he is too closely identified with Mr Hollande, he risks losing the crucial centre-Right support he will need to defeat Ms Le Pen, commentators say.

Mr Hollande is publicly reserving judgment but is believed to favour Mr Macron privately. Mr Macron’s military service proposal, designed to appeal to Right-wingers who agree with Ms Le Pen that the Socialist government failed to provide security, could easily backfire.

“Where does Mr Macron intend to find the €15 billion [£13 billion] he says it will cost to set up the initial infrastructure, plus up to €3 billion a year to run the scheme?” a senior military officer asked.

“That’s more than half the cost of the nuclear deterrent.”

Eric Ciotti, an MP from the centreRight Republicans party, described the national service plan as “gimmick… that serves no purpose”.

The father of the Orly attacker has said his son, Ziyed Ben Belgacem, 39, had “never been a terrorist”, denying the French authorities’ assertion that he had been radicalised while in prison.

Belgacem had been flagged for “showing signs of radicalisation” in prison in 2011 and 2012, Paris prosecutor François Molins said.

Yesterday it emerged that Belgacem was wanted for drugs trafficking at the time of the attack, but French authorities believed he had left the country.

The revelation is likely to cause unease about the way the authorities monitor suspected radical Islamists.