The European Union’s population, currently 450.6 million, is approaching its historic peak before beginning a long, steady decline in the decades ahead, according to a new report from the bloc’s Joint Research Centre, which warns of the mounting challenges posed by falling birth rates.
The EU’s population is projected to edge up slightly to 453.3 million by 2029, before starting to shrink. It is expected to fall to 445 million by 2050 and to 398.8 million by 2100, a level last seen in the mid-1970s.
At the same time, Europeans are living longer than ever. Life expectancy reached 81.5 years in 2024, driven by advances in medicine and improved living conditions, and by 2050 nearly one in three EU residents will be aged 65 or older, up from roughly one in five today. By the end of the century, life expectancy could exceed 90 years for women and 86 for men.
Brussels acknowledges the trend carries serious consequences, including labour shortages, mounting fiscal pressure, strain on health and education systems, and growing tensions over territorial cohesion. It is also fuelling new markets around the so-called “silver economy,” offering products and services tailored to older people.
“We are living longer and in better health than ever, one of our greatest achievements. But demographic change is transforming our societies, our economies and our labour markets, and we must act now to turn this shift into an opportunity,” said Dubravka Šuica, the European Commissioner for demographic issues.
The Commission stressed that boosting productivity and cutting unemployment will be essential to offset the effects of a shrinking working-age population. At present, around 20 per cent of people of working age remain outside the labour market, the employment gap between men and women stands at 10 percentage points, and some eight million young people are neither working, studying nor in training.
The report noted that migration is playing “an increasing role” in population growth, helping to partly offset the effects of an ageing, shrinking workforce, though it stressed this is not enough on its own to significantly alter the EU’s long-term demographic trajectory.
