Official data from the European Union (EU) has revealed that the bloc’s birth rate has plummeted to a record low.
However, the data shows that the bloc’s overall population has been rising due to immigration, despite the drop in births.
The shocking plunge was revealed in the latest data from the EU’s statistical office Eurostat.
The latest figures show that the number of babies born in the EU fell to a record low last year.
Despite this, the total population has been on the rise due to mass immigration.
Most of the influx of migrants has come from the Middle East and third-world nations.
According to Eurostat’s figures, births across the EU’s 27 member states stood at 3,665,000 in 2023.
This marks a decline of 5.5% year-on-year.
Birth rates have been falling steadily across the EU in recent years.
Meanwhile, immigration rates have been soaring.
The number of births last year was the lowest in the EU countries since comparable data was first collected in 1961.
The annual decline is the largest on record, the Financial Times (FT) reports.
The sharpest drops in births over the past decade have been recorded in Italy, Spain, Greece, Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states.
Demographic experts polled by the FT believe the longstanding trend of Europeans having fewer babies may have been exacerbated by concerns over economic and political tensions on the international level.
They also believe the worst surge in inflation in a generation, and fears over “climate change” and the Covid pandemic have put people off from starting families.
According to a recent report, the Total Fertility Rate has halved from 3.3 children per woman in 1960 to 1.5 in 2022 in the 38 countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The OECD includes 22 EU member states plus Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and others.
According to Eurostat, all EU regions have fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1 live births per woman.
Nevertheless, the population of the EU has been on the rise over the past decade, with the exception of the pandemic year of 2021.
The most notable jump was recorded in 2023, according to Eurostat figures.
“The negative natural change (more deaths than births) was outnumbered by the positive net migration,” the agency said in a release in July.
Eurostat attributed the population growth to increased migration after the pandemic.
The agency also noted the influx of immigrants from Ukraine who received temporary protection status in the EU.
While Ukraine is in Europe, the country is not a member state of the EU.
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