As of 2019, a new government measure called “Universal National Service” will be introduced consisting of forcing all 16-year-old French teens to live together for one month, including a 15 day period of “collective housing”, Le Telegramme reports.
“It’s a fundamental structural reform for society.” said Gabriel Attal, Minister of Education’s Secretary, who’s in charge of the UNS project.
UNS’s primary goal is to “promote social and territorial mixity” and “the social and national cohesion’s development”, according to the government site.
The UNS will comport two steps, one is compulsory and the other is optional. The first one will consist in a month for all 16-year-olds and during this month, the teenagers will be forced to be in a “collective housing” for 15 days, which means, they’ll be forced to live together.
The second phase is, contrary to the precedent one, only optional and can last up to 12 months.
Concretely, it’ll means that 16-year-old teenagers from Seine-Saint-Denis (where the most given name at birth was Mohammed in 2018), will live with native French teenagers, in the same house, for 15 days.