Ageing Europe needs the new blood immigration brings
shrinking workforces and stagnant living standards, immigration is both a partial economic solution and a political problem in its own right.
The Africans shoud go there and take over the thing.
Tony Barber in London
In a Europe defined by ageing societies, shrinking workforces and stagnant living standards, immigration is both a partial economic solution and a political problem in its own right.
Immigrants and their impact on labour markets and welfare systems are sure to be electrically charged themes in next year’s British general election, and to shape political debate elsewhere, from the Nordic states to Greece
Buried in a report from the European Commission are forecasts for immigration and population growth up to 2060 that may add fuel to these fires. That these estimates are the work not of politicians with axes to grind, but of non-partisan EU specialists, serves in principle to enhance their credibility.
According to data released on November 27 by Britain’s Office for National Statistics, net migration to the UK surged to 260,000 in the year ending June 2014. This unexpectedly high figure emerged after the anti-EU, anti-immigrant UK Independence party stunned the ruling Conservatives of Prime Minister David Cameron by scoring its second parliamentary by-election victory in less than two months.
Latest opinion polls suggest Ukip may capture 14 to 18 per cent of the vote and seize third place in the next general election, due by May. Rightly or wrongly, this rightwing populist party takes the view that one of its trump cards will be public unease with perceived high immigration levels.
55m
Net migration into the EU up to 2060
Did the commission’s report, which predicts that net migration into the UK up to 2060 will amount to more than 9m people, slip beneath Ukip’s radar? If so, perhaps it was because the study goes under the flavourless title of “The 2015 Ageing Report: Underlying Assumptions and Projection Methodologies”. Be that as it may, the commission’s forecasts deserve attention.
Net migration into the EU up to 2060 will total 55m people, the report predicts. Almost 70 per cent of migrants will go to just four of the EU’s 28 member states: 15.5m to Italy, 9.2m to the UK, 7m to Germany and 6.5m to Spain.
If these forecasts are accurate, the political impact of immigration will reverberate well beyond the UK. Support for Italy’s Northern League, an anti-immigrant party close in spirit to Ukip, is already spreading south of its traditional strongholds above the Po valley. Anti-immigrant movements are less visible in Germany and Spain, but they are fixtures of the political scene in Austria, France and the Netherlands.
The commission makes no predictions about where the tens of millions of new immigrants into Europe will come from. But it points out that Africa’s share of the world population is forecast to rise to 28 per cent in 2060 from 15 per cent in 2010. It predicts that Europe’s share of the total will fall to 5.0 per cent from 7.2 per cent, in spite of net migrant inflows.
Overall, the EU’s population is forecast to rise to 523m in 2060 from 507m last year. Of particular interest are the predictions for individual countries. The UK will become the EU’s most populous country, rising to 80.1m from 64.1m. France will go up to 75.7m from 65.7m, but Germany will decline to 70.8m from 81.3m.
If the UK stays in the EU, and if Scotland does not secede, the British will therefore have the greatest relative weight in the bloc — to be translated, for example, into more European Parliament seats. But this extra weight will be thanks partly to the arrival of millions of new immigrants to UK shores.
For sure, various assumptions for each EU member state underlie the commission’s estimates — about birth rates, life expectancy and the evolution of labour markets. Arguably, the report’s most important conclusion is that European societies are ageing so fast that, even with high net inward migration, the EU will in 2060 have only two working-age people for every person aged over 65, instead of four working-age people as is the case now.
Such a sobering estimate makes it clear why immigration seems more of an economic necessity than a political choice. Perhaps Ukip should arrange, over the next four months, for a copy of the commission’s report to be dropped on every British voter’s doorstep? |
