Italy was the European Union country that saw the biggest drop in total population between January 1, 2021 and January 1, 2022, with 253,1 thousand fewer residents, a new report released on Monday (11) by the Eurostat, the European statistics office.
But, if the Italian territory was the one that recorded the most losses, the retraction for the second consecutive year was felt across the block, going from 447 million people in January 2021 to 446,8 million a year later.
One of the main causes of deaths being more numerous than births, again, is the Covid-19 pandemic and not even migration, which has been growing since 2020, has been able to contain the slowdown. “In the EU, there were 531 more deaths in 2020 than in 2019 and there were 113 more deaths in 2021 than in 2020,” says the report.
In comparing the historical series, starting in 1960, the European Union went from 354,4 million to 446,8 million (also considering the situation of countries that were not in the bloc at the time, but are now).
“The growth rate has been gradually decreasing in recent decades. For example, the population increased, on average, by around 0,7 million people per year between 2005-2022 compared to the average of 3 million people per year in the 1960s”, he further informs, highlighting that the current drop in numbers started in 2011.
The document showed that Germany, France and Italy together have 47% of the entire population of the European bloc and that, in total, 17 countries saw an increase in numbers and 10 recorded a drop.
“Among the 17 EU Member States where the population increased, nine recorded both an increase in natural increase and also a positive result of migration that contributed to population growth (Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, France, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands and Sweden). In eight other members (Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Lithuania, Austria, Portugal and Finland), the positive migration rate led growth while the natural population was negative”, the report also points out.
In the cases of Bulgaria, Italy, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, the record of population decline came due to “natural negative change”, but there was an increase in the foreign population. Croatia, Greece, Latvia, Romania and Slovakia recorded a drop in both indices. (Ansa Brasil)
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