The Depopulation of Europe

By common consent, the recent EU summit in Stockholm was a dull affair. EU leaders made some progress on creating a single financial market throughout the Union, and on establishing a standard European patent. Other proposals for economic liberalisation, were deadlocked. The idea of a single European air traffic control area was blocked because of a dispute between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar; proposals for liberalisation of gas and electricity supplies were resisted by France, which promotes the public service advantages of public sector utilities.

There was good news, however, in that the Stockholm summit witnessed the first signs that the EU may at last be creeping, like a crab, toward an idea hitherto taboo: that the European Union might require an immigration policy. Until recently, member governments held two ideas on immigration: they all took the view that ordinary immigration must be restricted or prevented; they all agreed that asylum-seekers be vilified as “bogus” economic migrants and deterred through policies of harassment, intimidation and in some cases detention.

In addition, some member governments, like those of Germany and Austria, have demonstrated serious anxiety that EU enlargement will incite a flood of job-seekers from Central and Eastern Europe, and made clear that they will demand a long delay in granting free movement of labour to any new member state. Eighteen months ago, at the Tampere summit, EU leaders said that they recognised “the need for more efficient management of migration flows.” What they really meant, however, was stronger measures to tackle illegal immigration.

Stockholm came one step closer to admitting Europe’s real population problem, when it spoke of “the demographic challenge of an ageing population of which people of working age constitute an ever-smaller part.” Indeed, the summit communiquО said that “an in-depth discussion of immigration, migration and asylum” would take place at the EU summit at the end of this year.

But EU leaders have yet to admit what everybody knows: that Europe’s population is not just ageing, it is starting to decline, and is likely to decline steeply in coming decades. At the Stockholm summit the leaders pretended that the solution to Europe’s ageing problem will be found in better job mobility, more flexibility, and further economic reform. The plain fact, however, is that Europe’s population decline can only be stemmed by substantial inward immigration.

In February 2001 the United Nations published its latest forecasts for world population over the next fifty years. The broad picture is that the population of the world’s less developed regions is expected to rise from 4.9 billion today to 8.2 billion in 2050, while the population of the developed regions will, in aggregate, remain roughly stable at 1.2 billion. Within the developed world, however, Europe’s population is expected to decline markedly.

In some European countries, like France and Ireland, the population will actually rise. But in others there will be steep falls. The population of Germany will decline from 82m to just under 71m, that of Italy from 57.5m to 43m, and that of Spain from nearly 40m to just over 31m. “all in all, the population of the EU 15 will decline from 376m to 339.3m, a fall of 37m or 10%. Even sharper declines are expected in the candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe, from a total of 105m to 85m, a fall of 20m, or about 20%.

The implications are far-reaching. First, on a medium-term time scale, the EU needs substantial immigrants. Second, the fear of a tidal wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe is largely fantasy. Third, Eastern Europe will itself need substantial immigration.

Two strategic footnotes need to be added to this scenario. First, Turkey’s population is likely to rise hugely in the next fifty years, from 66m to nearly 100m. Now, Turkey has in principle been accepted as a potential candidate for EU membership. But if UN projections are correct, Turkey’s population in 2050 would be far larger than any other member state, including Germany, and would represent nearly 20% of the population of the enlarged EU. The increase in Turkey’s population might almost balance out the decline in the population of the present EU fifteen; but it is unlikely that today’s existing member states will regard this as satisfactory.

Moreover, the strategic balance to Europe’s east will also be transformed, because the populations of Russia and the Ukraine are expected to decline even more steeply than those of the EU. Russia’s population, currently 145.5m, is expected to fall to 104.5m; Ukraine’s population is projected to fall from nearly 50m to 30m, a startling drop of 40%.

This regional pattern of population decline in Europe, Russia and Ukraine, needs to be set against the larger picture of a 3 billion increase globally, mainly in the developing world. It is difficult to avoid the implication that Europe’s need for immigrants is likely to combine with massive, and probably irresistible, migratory pressure from developing countries to the developed world.

What is now required is that EU leaders stop pretending that Europe’s demographic ageing can be solved by more internal labour mobility. The EU will instead need a large, managed immigration policy. This is, undoubtedly, a difficult demand to make of politicians, particularly given the legacy of xenophobic politics in so many member states. But it must be done, and soon.