In 2020, the pandemic has caused a general decline in population in most countries due to the significant death rate it has had, in countries like ours official government figures are 70,000 deaths, while statistics have given almost 60,000 more deaths than the ones the Executive wanted to count, according to La Gaceta, quoted by Rador.
Walking through BucharestPhoto: Inquam Photos / George Călin
This did not happen in the rest of the European Union countries, but in any case, to make this short analysis we wanted to start from the official figures for 2020 and compare them with 2021 and 2022, to see what happened after the pandemic in The European Union and the Eurozone.
We thus see that in the European Union we lost inhabitants in the last two years, compared to 2020, 0.11% in 2021 and 0.04% in 2022, this means that we lost 656,428 inhabitants in total, in the two mentioned years.
If we do the same analysis on the countries of the euro zone, we have better news, the euro zone in 2021 has no population growth, it remains the same, but in 2022 it has a growth of 0.1%, which allows us to state that the population in the 20 countries of the euro zone increased by 312,193 inhabitants.
In 2020, the population, in absolute value, was 447.5 million inhabitants in the EU, in 2022 it was 446.8 million.
The data is good for us because we know that the birth rate in all EU countries is very low, and if these population figures have not fallen in a much more worrying way, it has been due to immigration, which has supported the share of the European population .
On the other hand, we see that there are tensions in France, because the president of the country has decided to postpone the retirement of the French by two years, to try to avoid the bankruptcy of the pension system, in the medium term, and (in Spain) Airef (La Autoridad Independiente de Responsabilidad Fiscal) has just harshly criticized the Minister of Social Security, for his disastrous reform, which he says he will present to Europe, without negotiating with CEOE (Confederación Española de Organizaciones Empresariales, the Spanish business community) or any other representative of business people and, according to this independent agency, such a reform would cause Spain to accumulate a debt of more than 150% of GDP in a few years, if it wanted to continue paying pensions.
One of the big problems in all countries is that life expectancy has increased, fortunately, but on the other hand, the mass of workers with the ability to generate enough income for the pension system is shrinking, and soon the number of public sector employees , plus that of retirees, plus that of the unemployed, may end up being greater than that of workers in the productive system, and therefore there will be more people paid than the number of people working to support the system. In short, we are becoming a region of old people.
France and the Netherlands, the biggest increases
We have 17 countries with an increase (in the number of inhabitants), compared to 10 with a decrease (in the number of inhabitants), and those with a decrease have a greater weight than those with an increase, because the countries with the highest growth, in percentage , namely Luxembourg, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta and Sweden, are very small countries.
In absolute terms, France is the country with the highest growth, adding 357,051 inhabitants in two years, followed by the Netherlands, which adds 183,087 inhabitants, Sweden, with 124,737 inhabitants, Belgium, with 108,696, and Spain, which is a the fifth country, in absolute value, with the largest contribution, of 100,191 inhabitants.
Italy, Poland and Romania, the biggest decreases
On the other hand, the countries with the biggest decreases are Italy, with a population decrease of 658,366 people, being without a doubt the country with the worst performance in this variable.
It is followed by the sixth most important country in the EU, Poland, which has a decrease of 303,891 inhabitants, followed by Romania, with a decrease of 290,740 inhabitants, Croatia, recently entered the euro zone, with a decrease of 179,091 inhabitants, and the Czech Republic, which, although it had an increase in 2022, did not grow enough and recorded a loss of 177,232 inhabitants.
The European Commission, chaired by Von der Leyen, is engrossed in its 2030 Climate Agenda (Green Deal) and concerned with making our food the healthiest in the world, willing to make us eat insects rather than worry about the demographic winter that awaits us.
I know of only one country, Hungary, which is implementing very serious and aggressive plans to promote the birth rate, which lost 80,516 inhabitants in two years, but it seems that in a very short time it can recover its birth rate.
Our other leaders believe that migration is the solution, forgetting that the situation can be reversed at any time (the 2008-2014 crisis made many Colombian migrants return to their country of origin) and that cultural integration policies are also needed, to avoid the appearance of ghettos, which socially distort any country. You only have to look at France and especially Paris to realize that.
Europe and its leaders must include in their plans, immediately, measures to promote the birth rate and reduce our dependence on migration in the next 20 years, according to La Gaceta, quoted by Rador.
