The European Union now openly assumes that immigration will help keep its population and workforce from falling too quickly. The European Commission’s Demography Report 2026 depicts an ageing Europe, with fewer births and a shrinking working-age population.
Rather than trying to reverse the trend, Brussels is largely preparing to manage it—with continued immigration playing a central role.
In 2024, 3.55 million children were born in the EU, compared with 6.8 million in 1964. The fertility rate has fallen to 1.34 children per woman, far below the 2.1 required to maintain a stable population without immigration. Since 2012, more people have died in the EU each year than have been born. Whenever the population has grown, immigration has been the reason.
In 2024, 4.2 million immigrants arrived in the EU from non-EU countries, while 1.6 million people left EU territory. At the beginning of 2025, 46.7 million people born outside the Union were living within it, equivalent to 10.4% of the population.
The report does not project the evolution of the native population, but it demonstrates in unequivocal terms that Europeans of native origin are losing relative demographic weight because they are not reproducing at the same rate at which they are ageing and dying.
Eurostat builds continued immigration into its population projections. Its central scenario assumes that more people will enter the EU than leave it every year until 2100. The model also assumes that a shrinking workforce will draw in more people from outside the EU. For every annual fall in the working-age population, it adds immigration equal to 10% of that decline. Without net immigration, Eurostat estimates that the EU would have around 130 million fewer inhabitants in 2100 than under its central scenario.
What is most striking is that the report does not treat restoring the birth rate to replacement level as a realistic goal. The document presents legal migration as one answer to labour shortages, promotes recruitment deals with third countries, and highlights a planned online platform to connect companies with foreign workers. Low birth rates, by contrast, are treated as a problem that government policy can do little to change, leaving Europe to adapt to the consequences.
In other words, restoring Europe’s birth rate is not the main priority. That is the decision underlying the report. Europe could do more to make it easier for young people to marry, find homes, and raise children. Instead, Brussels places much of its hope in immigration, getting more people into work and raising productivity. A major change in Europe’s population is presented as a technical problem, even though immigration levels are ultimately a political choice.
