Nuno Melo Will Rewrite the Armed Forces' Entry Standards, Shelving a 2023 Order That Lowered the Minimum Height to 1.54 Metres

Portugal's Defence Minister, Nuno Melo, says the government will draw up new medical and physical standards for joining the Armed Forces, setting aside an order approved by the previous Socialist government in 2023 that lowered the minimum height and stopped several chronic illnesses from automatically ruling candidates out. That order was approved three years ago but never took effect.

Melo was speaking to journalists on Tuesday on the sidelines of a conference on Portugal's defence industry, organised by the employers' confederation CIP with idD Portugal Defence at the Military Academy in Amadora. Asked about the 2023 order, he said "another version will soon be presented" by the current PSD and CDS-PP government.

What the 2023 order would have changed

The order, a portaria signed by the then Defence Minister Helena Carreiras, set out new general tables of fitness and capacity (the Tabelas Gerais de Aptidão e de Capacidade) for entry into the Armed Forces. Among other changes, it would have:

• lowered the general minimum height for entry to 1.54 metres, for men and women alike;
• ended automatic exclusion for several chronic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes not treated with insulin and thyroid and other endocrine disorders, which would instead be assessed case by case by a medical board, as already happens with HIV infection.

The text, however, left its entry into force to a later order from the Defence Minister, to be issued on a proposal from the chiefs of staff of the three branches. That order was never published, so the 2023 tables have sat in suspension ever since. The Socialists questioned the government about it last week.

Melo's objection

Melo said the new tables should reflect what the Army, Navy and Air Force actually need, and the demanding standards required by "the great complexity of the missions" the forces carry out. Widening the net too far, he argued, might bring in more recruits without guaranteeing that the forces meet the standards expected of them.

He accused his predecessor's approach of "masking the problem" of recruitment rather than solving it, and compared it to abolishing school exams to improve the statistics. He repeated his claim that recruitment numbers have started to recover since the Democratic Alliance took office.

In the remarks reported by the Lusa news agency, Melo gave no date for the new tables and did not say which of the 2023 changes, if any, the new version will keep.

Why it matters

Recruitment and retention have been a persistent problem for the Armed Forces. Last month the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces argued that keeping trained personnel should come before recruiting new ones, as the next Military Programming Law takes shape. Entry standards decide who can apply in the first place. For anyone considering a military career, the height limit and the medical tables are the first filter, and the rules that apply today remain those in force before 2023 until the government publishes its alternative.