July 11 (Reuters) – The European Union’s population has shrunk in 2021 for the second consecutive year, the EU’s statistics office said on Monday, as the bloc recorded more than two million pandemic-related deaths of COVID-19.
According to Eurostat, the population of the 27 EU member countries has fallen by more than 656,000 since January 2020.
“In 2020 and 2021, the positive migratory balance did not compensate for the negative natural variation (more deaths than births-Editor’s note) in the EU and, consequently, the total population of the EU decreased”, indicates the report, highlighting the impact of the pandemic.
The number of deaths began to exceed that of births in the EU a decade ago, but immigration from countries outside the bloc helped to compensate for this gap until the first year of the pandemic, in 2020.
The EU had already recorded a decline in its population in 2011 – after a precedent in 1960 – but the rise had resumed due to net migration.
Due to the pandemic, an aging population and relatively low fertility rates, Eurostat said deaths are expected to continue to exceed births in years to come.
“If this is the case, the overall decrease or growth of the EU population in the future is likely to depend largely on the contribution of net migration.”
While Italy, Poland and Romania recorded the largest population declines, more than half of the EU Member States saw their population increase, led by France, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Eurostat counted 446.8 million inhabitants within the EU in January 2022. (Report Alize Degorce and Sarah Morland Gdansk; French version Elitsa Gadeva, told by Sophie Louet)