Austrians voted overwhelmingly Sunday to keep the country's conscript system rather than introducing a professional army, a plan proposed by Chancellor Werner Faymann's Social Democratic Party (SPOe), dpa reported. In a referendum, 60 per cent supported the current system of mandatory military service or alternative social service for young men, while 40 per cent wanted professional soldiers, according to projections by public broadcaster ORF based on 59 per cent of the ballots cast. Austria will therefore remain one of the few European Union countries with a mandatory military service, along with Cyprus, Estonia, Finland and Greece.
