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EU population forecasts
August 27, 2008
The demographic forecasts contained in a new report from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical agency, are worth a good look. Everyone knows the EU’s rapidly ageing population and shrinking workforce are making its task of promoting prosperity and job growth ever more difficult. But we don’t often see the hard numbers behind the general trend.
What I found most striking were the predictions for the big EU-6. In terms of their current populations, these are Germany (82.2m people), France (61.9m), the UK (61.3m), Italy (59.5m), Spain (45.3m) and Poland (38.1m).
By 2060, the order will have dramatically changed. In first place, says Eurostat, will be the UK (76.7m people), followed by France (71.8m), Germany (70.8m), Italy (59.4m), Spain (51.9m) and Poland (31.1m).
In other words, Germany and Poland are forecast to suffer catastrophic population falls of 13.9 per cent and 18.3 per cent respectively over the next 50 years. From being the EU’s largest country with more than 20m people than second-ranked France, Germany will tumble into third place. Poland, not far behind Spain today, will fall way back, with 20m fewer people than Spain in 2060.
It is hard to believe that such massive changes, which Eurostat says will take place in spite of immigration into the EU, would not have a big impact on the distribution of power in the EU. For example, the Lisbon treaty - which, of course, may never come into force - recognises Germany’s present pre-eminence by allocating Germany more European Parliament members than any other country. But that arrangement surely could not last if Eurostat’s forecast were to prove accurate.
As for Poland, its leaders cited its population size last year as an argument for more weight in the EU’s institutions. But if its population were to shrink as much as Eurostat predicts, it would be difficult to make the case that Poland deserves the same influence as, say, Spain.
Meanwhile, the UK would find itself in the remarkable position of being the largest country in an organisation that it has never seemed entirely sure it wants to be part of. Of course, the secession of Scotland (with just over 5m people now) from the UK would make a difference.
One glaring omission from the Eurostat report is Turkey, an official candidate for EU membership. Hostility to Turkey’s bid in countries such as Austria and France stems partly from the objection that Turkey is already so big (more than 70m people) that its admission would fundamentally change the EU’s nature. But I see that, according to a recent United Nations Population Fund forecast, Turkey will keep on growing and have over 100m people by 2050.
Given what Eurostat is saying about population trends in existing EU member-states, it would seem that opposition to Turkey’s admission will just get stronger and stronger.
Population is only a problem if the voting rules are unfair. The Lisbon Treaty was an attempt to base voting weight directly in proportion to population size which is unfair and would artificially shore up the voting weight of the Old Europe alliance of france &Germany (whose combined weight would be 30%, within touching distance of the Lisbon Treaty blocking threshold of 35%). Had the EU adopted proposals from Sweden and Poland to base voting weight in proportion to the square-root of population (so-called Penrose Law) then this would be a non-issue.
No matter what the distribution of voting weights though, QMV remains a key flaw in the institutional make-up of the EU, whose introduction is directly related to the crisis of democratic legitimacy engulfing Brussels. The crisis can however be solved by keeping QMV if EU law (in areas beyond the common market) is made inferior to national law.
Posted by: Freeborn John | August 27th, 2008 at 3:22 pm | Report this commentI really don’t understand the preoccupation with population growth. Why is it considered good to have population growth when we should be looking at a sustainable future for humans? It is an entirely unsustainable determinant. What will the UK be like, an already crowded country, if the prediction of 76 million people were crammed onto this island ~ I can’t bear to think of the consequences! Get real!
Posted by: J Sutton | August 27th, 2008 at 4:09 pm | Report this commentI have thought all along that Turkish accession to the EU would be a serious mistake, based on demographics.
Posted by: James Canning | August 27th, 2008 at 6:39 pm | Report this commentIf it’s to be believed, this population report is scary reading for anyone who cares about what it’s like to live in the UK or Ireland. The UK already has one of the highest population densities in the US and another 10 million people, will all their attendant environmental needs (ie. sewerage, transportation needs, housing needs, food, etc.) are not going to help. In considering immigration there needs to be a balance between the rights of the indigenous population to the common property of their homeland and sympathy for those wishing to come and work and live there. Maybe it’s time to limit the inward flow of migrants in the case of the UK and Ireland.
Posted by: nisha | August 27th, 2008 at 7:09 pm | Report this commentInteresting but do these predictions really take into effect the freedom of movement that exists in the EU. Right now emigration from the uk to eastern europe doesn’t seem likely but with half a century of high economic growth rates and the continued increase in English fluency in the east, maybee the flow of imigartion could reverse. If 50 years ago someone said Europe would be a United Democracy with free movement of people and goods and people It might have sounded just as crazy. Maybee I’ve been reading too much classical liberal literature but I’d expect when you have free movement of people and goods populations growth should be more entropic than what’s predicted here.
Posted by: Chris | August 27th, 2008 at 10:07 pm | Report this commentIf Tony Barber is so concerned about the distribution of power within the EU in 50 years, I suggests he had a close look at TODAY’S distribution of power in the UN first. If proportional representation is anything to go by, wouldn’t it be a logical move on the part of the UK to give up its UN Security Council seat to India — at more than 1 bn people slightly underrepresented at the UN currently I should say, and also a nuclear power by the way? Or would it be wrong to say that such a move comes approx. 50 years TOO LATE? If the UK is so glued to their seats, what credibility does Mr. Barber’s implied claim to power 50 years AHEAD of the event carry? I guess it must be just another case of hang-up over past glories of the colonial days of the Empire. GET REAL.
Posted by: The Idiot | August 28th, 2008 at 2:49 am | Report this commentI see nothing wrong with a shrinking population provided that it is a well-educated, law-abiding, productive and healthy one.
On the other hand, when a growing population means the emergence of a 21st century “Lumpenproletariat” as seems to be happening in the UK, then an increase in numbers is bad news. Binge drinking, knife crime and promiscuity (single mothers with several children from different fathers, for example) in the UK are regularly reported on in German and French TV.
Posted by: J.J. | August 28th, 2008 at 6:36 am | Report this commentTo John Freeborn: Do you want to have an equal opprotunities EU? Then let the people have one vote per person, and start thinking on making disappear states. We can no longer be Germans, Frenchs, Brtish, etc. Instead base the representation votes according to the EU regions (Cumbria, Languedoc, Valonia, etc..) The actual states are guilty on hiper-nationalism who has brang Europe to many civil wars in the last 500 years. We must get rid of the states and become only europeans. Do you still think, as in the beginning of XX century that Germans or French are difference races? ha, ha.
Posted by: manel hernandez | August 28th, 2008 at 10:43 am | Report this commentAren’t these population forecasts really just extrapolations from current trends? i.e. if what has happened in the last 5 years continues in the next 50 then Y will happen. But rarely does the recent past continue (e.g. Germany recently recording its highest birth rate) and therefore most ‘forecasts’ look ridiculous when looked back on years after they were made
Posted by: PF | August 28th, 2008 at 1:20 pm | Report this commentDear Sir,
If you have a prepared mind, in this instance advanced probability would help, you could ask a demographer very hard questions. Because demography is applied probability and statistics.
After a few hard questions, the demographer would admit that she can only predict birth rates for 25 years at a stretch.
But then, a philosopher may ask, from the perspecive of the Universe will the population of Britain in 2060 be of any importance?
Probably NOT,
Posted by: Just Browsing | August 28th, 2008 at 6:54 pm | Report this comment“But rarely does the recent past continue (e.g. Germany recently recording its highest birth rate) and therefore most ‘forecasts’ look ridiculous when looked back on years after they were made.”
Most modern projections have avoided the flaw of assuming that all things will continue indefinitely. IIASA out of Vienna has some interesting propabilistic reports that seem to match up.
Natural chance in a population is easier to predict than migration. The low cohort fertility rate in Spain is ongoing and could, then, be expected to remain for some time to come, for instance, but the influx of millions of young immigrants in their childbearing years came completely out of nowhere.
Things can change. Poland might in a decade’s time accumulate waves of Ukrainian and Vietnamese immigrants, or millions of Spaniards fleeing desertification might move east to Romania or Ukraine for work on the Black Sea.
Posted by: Randy McDonald | August 29th, 2008 at 5:16 am | Report this commentWhat the statisticians haven’t noted is that there is not only inward immigration as far as the Uk is concerned, currently the emigration of true british citizens to countries outside of the eu stands at 260,000 per annum. This is likely to increase as time goes by, so in 60 years time it is unlikely that the proposed 76 million people will have a majority of real British people as they are today.
Posted by: Barry Davies | August 29th, 2008 at 3:20 pm | Report this commentA UK population greater than that of Germany is not a prospect I would relish.
Posted by: James Canning | August 29th, 2008 at 11:54 pm | Report this commentThere is no rational basis to keep Turkey out of the EU.
Posted by: James Anderson | September 1st, 2008 at 8:20 am | Report this commentIts had a been stable democracy for much longer than its neighbor Greece, and, has a strong and growing economy (unlike Greece which depends on EU subsidies).
Most of the objections seem to come down to a combination of racism and islamaphobia.
Although to be fair the French will oppose any expansion of the EU since new members such as Poland, Estonia et al. had the temerity to exercise thier voting rights independently and not blindly follow the French lead.
These simplistic projections do not take into account the flexibility and mutability of the human species.
They totaly ignore several factors.
Internal migration within the EU market forces, job markets, weather and cheaper property drives a growing interal migration within the EU. How many UK citizens live in Spain and rurual France? Every European finacial centre now has a substantial English speaking population.
The other problem is that viewing immigration as a negative issue is mostly covert racism, and, is mostly a problem for the wrinkley generation. Younger europeans who have grown up with and went to school with immmigrants and the children of immigrants simply will not see this as a problem.
Posted by: James Anderson | September 1st, 2008 at 8:30 am | Report this comment“Internal migration within the EU market forces, job markets, weather and cheaper property drives a growing interal migration within the EU. How many UK citizens live in Spain and rurual France? Every European finacial centre now has a substantial English speaking population.”
Immigration and migration is a major factor, and one that’s often overlooked. Remember the predictions that Spain’s population was set to decline by one-fifth or so by 2050? If (say) France adopted an open-door policy towards immigration and Britain didn’t, the numbers would be reversed.
That said, cohort fertility is the dominant trend in population growth and decline, and we know that these rates remain relatively stable, ot to mention that we know to a fairly good degree of accuracy the number of women who’ll be in their childbearing years in a country.
Immigration is important, inasmuch as immigration policy counts. Shunting immigrants off to periurban slums isn’t the sort of thing that will do anyone much good.
Posted by: Randy McDonald | September 2nd, 2008 at 1:56 am | Report this commentThe problem with using raw numbers to represent voting blocs is that countries become more powerful purely because of social habits and possibly lack of primary education and family planning. Power should be allocated on the basis of how interested the voters are in the common well-being of the superstate and do they take the trouble to voice their view.
Posted by: A. Osman | September 2nd, 2008 at 2:39 pm | Report this commentOn immigration - it is an accepted case that immigrants are generally more hard-working than locals and provide much needed manual labour which ultimately help the host country.
manel hernandez: The principle that the majority of populaiton decides is not accepted at international level. That is why there are nation-states in the world. Nations will not go away either the things that underpin nationality (e.g.language & culture) are extremely resistant to change. The EU’s crisis of legitimacy is a result of ignoring these basic facts and would only be made worse by what you propose. We need to return powers from Brussels.
Posted by: Freeborn John | September 5th, 2008 at 1:03 pm | Report this commentProbably by then Austria will be part of the German Federation so the population of Germany will be at least 80 million by then (in the worse case) while Wallonia probably will integrate into France driving its population to 75 million people, similar to Britain.
Anyway there are a lot of ifs about the future, as we know.
During the 80s it was expected that the already declining German population would mean that by the year 2000 France, the UK and Italy would have a larger population…but then Reunification and the immigration of several millio ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe changed everything and now, 2008, Germany has 21 million people more than France or the UK.
Also it was expected during the 80s that Spain´s population would decrease as a consequence of falling fertility rates but a wave of immigration from Eastern Europe and LatinAmerica drived Spain´s population to 46 million people, the largest increase in Spanish history, with milions of Spaniards marrying foreingners, most of them integrating into the Spanish society (above all Eastern Europeans and Latinamericans)
Anyway, by the year 2060 the population of the whole European Union will be similar to that of the U.S. (probably including Anglo Canada) and just twice larger than Brazil (now already 190 million people) so the whole European Peninsula of Eurasia will have just the size of a single nation even if just a third the population of China or India.
Posted by: Enrique | September 10th, 2008 at 2:25 am | Report this commentTurkey is too big fast growing population and too poor. The IMF is keeping its economy in check. Turkey is ruled by the military it is a psuedo democracy. Greece has been the fastest growing western EU economy and is a true democracy. Portugal Spain Ireland even the UK get get eu handouts France for its farmers Luxemburg Belgium. So to that person who wrote about Greece living on handouts to survive you are greatly mistaken and grossly misinformed. Turkey has not been a democracy longer than Greece. It had a military coup in 1980 and another in the 1990’s. Last military coup in Greece dissolved back in 1974!
Posted by: Paul Ely | October 10th, 2008 at 10:36 am | Report this commentTurkey will become an economic burden on the entire EU. The ice berg that sank the Titanic. A heavy anchor. It’s shear weight would sink the the EU economically. It is middle eastern in culture and on the map. If Turkey is let in then why not all of the middle east and North Africa. Most of these countries are much more wealthier. KUwait Saudi Arabia, Lybia, Dubai, etc
Posted by: tony alfred snowfield | October 10th, 2008 at 10:43 am | Report this commentThe Idiot, I must disagree. A shrinking population (and an aging one at that, is bad news). Who will pay for the myriad of seniors if our workforce becoming smaller and smaller? We need a sustainable workforce to support our economies, a shrinking one only hurts us.
Posted by: Ryan | October 18th, 2008 at 3:57 pm | Report this commentAnd to Freeborn John, to be honest with you, Britain’s 77 million population in 2060 wouldn’t be a factor considering that by 2050, India, China, the USA, Indonesia, and Nigeria will have over 300 million citizens.