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The population average across the European countries has been dropping continuously, especially in the last two years, with the COVID-19 pandemic enhancing such misfortunate events even further.
According to data from the European Office for Statistics, the first decline in population growth noticed in 2020, which was an impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has followed the EU even in 2022, with the population dropping from 447 million on January 1 of 2021 to 446.8 million on January of 2022, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
That’s a whopping 200,000 decline; with the negative natural change, indicating more deaths than births, it exceeded the positive net migration for a second year, most likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the EU, there were 531,000 more deaths in 2020 than in 2019, to be compared to 113,000 more deaths in 2021 than in 2020.
More specifically, the population in the EU stood at 350 million in 1960, to further increase to 370 million in 1970, to 400 million in 1980 and 425 million in the 2000s. However, this rate has remained below 450 million for the last three years.
“The rate of population growth has slowed down gradually in recent decades: for example, the EU population increased, on average, by about 0.7 million persons per year during the period 2005–2022, compared with an average increase of around 3.0 million persons per year during the 1960s,” the Eurostat’s report points out.
The population in the EU Member States in 2022 varies, with Germany having 83.2 million and Malta having 0.5 million inhabitants. The three main countries in terms of population are Germany, France and Italy, which together account for almost half – 47 per cent of all the population in the EU as of January 1, 2022.
Other countries with the highest population in the EU are Spain, Poland, Romania and the Netherlands, while countries with fewer inhabitants, except for Malta, are Luxembourg, Cyprus, Estonia and Latvia.
Although the population in the EU is mainly dropping, that isn’t the case for every Member State. In total, ten countries recorded a decrease in population between 2001 and 2022, with the largest decline being recorded in Italy (253,100) and the smallest in Slovenia (1,800). Increases were reported in the other 17 countries, with the largest being in France (185,900) and the smallest in Estonia (1,700).
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