Population would fall without immigration – Eurostat finds

Conservative commentators fear that mass migration to Europe is unlikely to stop in light of the divergent demographic trends in Europe and the developing world.

Heti Válasz’ Bálint Ablonczy finds Europe’s and Hungary’s demographic trends highly alarming. The conservative pundit quotes the latest Eurostat survey according to which the 1.5 million increase in the EU’s population is due to immigration. Depopulation tendencies are especially worrying in the post-Socialist space –Lithuania’s population has shrunk by more than 12 per cent, Latvia’s by 11 per cent and Romania’s by 7 per cent in the last decade. Although the decline of the Hungarian population by 2.4 per cent is less steep, Ablonczy still finds the trend worrying.

In Magyar Hírlap, Sándor Faggyas points out that the population of poor countries is rising swiftly, while European fertility rates are too low to maintain the current population levels. If the current trends continue and life prospects remain bad in the developing world, it is unlikely that mass migration to Europe can be stopped. He believes that Europe’s migration crisis can only be solved through large scale investment and development in Third World countries

Tags: demography, migration