The Chief of Staff of the Defense, Enzo Vecciarelli spoke during a hearing in the Chamber before the Defense Commission in the context of the fact-finding survey on the state of recruitment in the initial careers of the Armed Forces: "Starting from 2016, there was a negative trend in the recruitment of volunteer personnel which did not allow to fully achieve the recruitment objectives. A trend that has appeared gradually worsening, and which raises concerns in quantitative terms - for the achievement of the number of planned recruitments - and qualitative, for the risk of not being able to have an adequate pool of candidates to make an adequate selection of personnel".
To overcome the decline in enlistments in the Armed Forces, Vecciarelli specified "the Directorate General for military personnel was involved in pursuing a greater simplification of the competition notices, in order to meet the needs of all social classes of potential participants in the competition. Among the initiatives adopted, I primarily include the objective of reducing the merit qualifications that can be assessed as non-essential for the purposes of the required professionalism, so as not to penalize candidates who have not attended specific training courses, sometimes very expensive".