Responding to Europe's demographic decline must become one of the Union's top priorities, stressed Commission Vice-President Dubravka Šuica, responsible for Democracy and Demography, in front of the European Parliament's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, recalling in particular that by 2070, the Union is expected to lose 18% of people of working age.
“[The demographic challenge], we can make it a priority of the European Commission”, hammered home the Vice-President, insisting that all the other priorities of the institution, starting with the Green Deal, should be combined with a component linked to demographic issues (a request from NGOs, moreover - see EUROPE 12477/34). “Without people, without life, everything is useless”, she said.
The Vice-President reiterated the complexity of the problem. Firstly, the unfavourable evolution of the ratio of workers to persons over 65, which was 2.9 in 2019 and is expected to fall to 1.7 in 2070. A trend that will necessarily pose funding problems and will require a rethinking of current models, she said. At the same time, “the silver economy” represents an “opportunity”: the consumption of people above 50 will increase about 5% per year, reaching €5.7 trillion in 2025.
The phenomenon causes strong territorial disparities: Regarding the regional dimension, 31 million Europeans live in regions facing both demographic decline and low GDP per capita, with the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and Portugal being cited by Commissioner Šuica. For the Vice-President, the solution will come from the deployment of high-speed internet, which will make rural areas more attractive to workers. “Managed” immigration also represents a solution “to refill” the labour market.
The issue of loneliness is also gaining in importance in the thinking of her institution, she said, recalling that one third of households in the EU are made up of a single person.
For her, the European funds should be made available to meet the demographic challenge, citing cohesion policy and calling for judicious use of programming, but also of the Recovery Plan.
MEPs welcomed the Vice-President's words, but reminded her, as did Marc Botenga (GUE/NGL, Belgium), that the austerity policies her institution has promoted over the last two decades have resulted in Europe's fertility slump. Ms Agnes Jongerius (S&D, Netherlands), for her part, said that the increasing precariousness of employment, preventing young people from planning for the future, had the direct consequence of low fertility.
The Commission is expected to present a Green Paper on old age in January 2021. This will be followed by a long-term vision for rural areas in the first quarter. At the end of March 2021, the institution will present an EU strategy on children's rights. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)