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IMMIGRATION

How Europe’s population is changing and what the EU is doing about it

The populations of countries across Europe are changing, with some increasing whilst others are falling. Populations are also ageing meaning the EU is having to react to changing demographics.

Published: 26 July 2022 15:29 CEST
Crowds at Bern station. Photo by Sebastian Meier on Unsplash
The EU saw a population decline in the past two years.. (Photo by Sebastian Meier on Unsplash)

After decades of growth, the population of the European Union decreased over the past two years mostly due to the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The latest data from the EU statistical office Eurostat show that the EU population was 446.8 million on 1 January 2022, 172,000 fewer than the previous year. On 1 January 2020, the EU had a population of 447.3 million.

This trend is because, in 2020 and 2021 the two years marked by the crippling pandemic, there have been more deaths than births and the negative natural change has been more significant than the positive net migration.

But there are major differences across countries. For example, in numerical terms, Italy is the country where the population has decreased the most, while France has recorded the largest increase.

What is happening and how is the EU reacting?

In which countries is the population growing?

In 2021, there were almost 4.1 million births and 5.3 million deaths in the EU, so the natural change was negative by 1.2 million (more broadly, there were 113,000 more deaths in 2021 than in 2020 and 531,000 more deaths in 2020 than in 2019, while the number of births remained almost the same).

Net migration, the number of people arriving in the EU minus those leaving, was 1.1 million, not enough to compensate.

A population growth, however, was recorded in 17 countries. Nine (Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, France, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands and Sweden) had both a natural increase and positive net migration.

READ ALSO: IN NUMBERS: Five things to know about Germany’s foreign population

In eight EU countries (the Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Lithuania, Austria, Portugal and Finland), the population increased because of positive net migration, while the natural change was negative.

The largest increase in absolute terms was in France (+185,900). The highest natural increase was in Ireland (5.0 per 1,000 persons), while the biggest growth rate relative to the existing population was recorded in Luxembourg, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta (all above 8.0 per 1,000 persons).

In total, 22 EU Member States had positive net migration, with Luxembourg (13.2 per 1 000 persons), Lithuania (12.4) and Portugal (9.6) topping the list.

Births and deaths in the EU from 1961 to 2021 (Eurostat)

Where is the population declining?

On the other hand, 18 EU countries had negative rates of natural change, with deaths outnumbering births in 2021.

Ten of these recorded a population decline. In Bulgaria, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia population declined due to a negative natural change, while net migration was slightly positive.

In Croatia, Greece, Latvia, Romania and Slovakia, the decrease was both by negative natural change and negative net migration.

READ ALSO: Italian class sizes set to shrink as population falls further

The largest fall in population was reported in Italy, which lost over a quarter of a million (-253,100).

The most significant negative natural change was in Bulgaria (-13.1 per 1,000 persons), Latvia (-9.1), Lithuania (-8.7) and Romania (-8.2). On a proportional basis, Croatia and Bulgaria recorded the biggest population decline (-33.1 per 1,000 persons).

How is the EU responding to demographic change?

From 354.5 million in 1960, the EU population grew to 446.8 million on 1 January 2022, an increase of 92.3 million. If the growth was about 3 million persons per year in the 1960s, it slowed to about 0.7 million per year on average between 2005 and 2022, according to Eurostat.

The natural change was positive until 2011 and turned negative in 2012 when net migration became the key factor for population growth. However, in 2020 and 2021, this no longer compensated for natural change and led to a decline.

READ ALSO: IN NUMBERS: One in four Austrian residents now of foreign origin

Over time, says Eurostat, the negative natural change is expected to continue given the ageing of the population if the fertility rate (total number of children born to each woman) remains low.

This poses questions for the future of the labour market and social security services, such as pensions and healthcare.

The European Commission estimates that by 2070, 30.3 per cent of the EU population will be 65 or over compared to 20.3 per cent in 2019, and 13.2 per cent is projected to be 80 or older compared to 5.8 per cent in 2019.

The number of people needing long-term care is expected to increase from 19.5 million in 2016 to 23.6 million in 2030 and 30.5 million in 2050.

READ ALSO: How foreigners are changing Switzerland

However, demographic change impacts different countries and often regions within the same country differently.

When she took on the Presidency of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen appointed Dubravka Šuica, a Croatian politician, as Commissioner for Democracy and Demography to deal with these changes.

Among measures in the discussion, in January 2021, the Commission launched a debate on Europe’s ageing society, suggesting steps for higher labour market participation, including more equality between women and men and longer working lives.

In April, the Commission proposed measures to make Europe more attractive for foreign workers, including simplifying rules for non-EU nationals who live on a long-term basis in the EU. These will have to be approved by the European Parliament and the EU Council.

In the fourth quarter of this year, the Commission also plans to present a communication on dealing with ‘brain drain’ and mitigate the challenges associated with population decline in regions with low birth rates and high net emigration.

This article is published in cooperation with Europe Street News, a news outlet about citizens’ rights in the EU and the UK.

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PENSIONS

Spain needs 25 million foreign workers to keep its pensions afloat

As the retirement of baby boomers looms, Spain's ageing population and declining birth rate mean the country will need millions of foreign workers to maintain its public pension pot and reinforce the labour market, the Bank of Spain has warned.

Published: 2 May 2024 09:46 CEST
Spain needs 25 million foreign workers to keep its pensions afloat

A recent study by the Bank of Spain estimates that the country will need up to 25 million more immigrant workers by 2053 in order to combat demographic ageing and maintain the ratio of workers to pensioners in order to support the pension system.

Without an influx of more foreign workers or sudden increase in the birth rate in Spain, something that seems very unlikely, experts fear that the growing disparity between working age people and pensioners could put the public pensions system in danger in the medium to long-term.

Like in many countries in the western world, the Spanish population is ageing, with the percentage of the population over 65 years of age predicted to peak in 2050, when almost one in three will be 65 years old or older.

READ ALSO: Spain’s over 65s exceed 20 percent of the population for the first time

By 2035 around one in four (26.0 percent) of Spaniards are expected to be 65 or older. That figure is currently around one fifth of the population.

Furthermore, this is compounded by falling birth rates. Spain’s birth rate hit a record low in 2023, falling to its lowest level since records began, according to INE data. Spain’s fertility rate is the second lowest in the European Union, with Eurostat figures showing there were just 1.19 births per woman in Spain in 2021, compared with 1.13 in Malta and 1.25 in Italy.

If nothing changes, the current ratio of 3.8 people of working age for every pensioner is predicted to plummet to just 2.1 by 2053, according to INE projections.

Maintaining this ratio seems unlikely moving forward, according to the report’s conclusions, something that would put pressure on pensions without significantly increasing social security contributions among working age people.

READ ALSO: Older and more diverse: What Spain’s population will be like in 50 years

The Bank of Spain report noted that “immigrants have high labour participation rates, generally above those of natives – in 2022, 70 percent and 56.5 percent, respectively.”

In three decades’ time, the INE expects Spain to have 14.8 million pensioners, 18 million Spanish nationals of working age and 12 million foreigners. To maintain the ratio, the Bank of Spain forecasts that the working immigrant population would have to rise by more than 24 million to a total of 37 million overall.

Of course, the arrival of almost 25 million working-age foreigners seems unlikely, if not impossible. To achieve this, around 1 million net migrants would have to enter Spain each year (discounting departures), a figure unprecedented in recent history. To put the figure in context, between 2002 and 2022 net arrivals in Spain reached five million, roughly five times less than what would be necessary to maintain the balance between workers and pensioners.

READ ALSO: ‘Homologación’ – How Spain is ruining the careers of thousands of qualified foreigners

Putting the economics aside, even if such an increase were statistically plausible, such a surge in net migration would be contentious both politically and socially. And it’s not even certain that increased migrant flows would be able to fill the gap in working age people and bolster public pensions: “The capacity of migratory flows to significantly mitigate the process of population ageing is limited,” the Bank of Spain warned in its report. 

What these projections suggest is that Spain’s public pension system will, in coming decades, likely have to be sustained by the contribution of fewer workers overall. This likely means higher social security payments. “Migratory flows have been very dynamic in recent years, but it does not seem likely that they can avoid the process of population ageing… nor completely resolve the imbalances that could arise in the Spanish labour market in the future,” the report stated.

The problem of ageing will also be transferred to the labour market and the types of jobs filled in the future. Increased migratory flows will soften the effect, but the labour characteristics of migrants coming to Spain may not match the job market in the coming decades. The jobs of the future, increasingly digital, will likely require qualifications that many of the migrants expected to arrive in the coming years do not have.

Consequently, the Bank of Spain suggests that “without significant changes in the nature of migratory flows, it does not seem likely that… [they] can completely resolve the mismatches between labour supply and demand that could occur in the coming years in the Spanish labour market.”

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