Europe and Demography

‘A New Skills Agenda for Europe’ focus on equipping Europeans with the right skills in order to increase Europe’s workforce employability and to respond to changes in labour market requirements. The agenda is grounded on the evidence of the existence of skills gap and mismatch across the Union and within countries. There is a shortage of basic, digital, transversal, and entrepreneurial skills. A common understanding of key competences on the job is missing. Vocational education and training (VET) is undervalued and its attractiveness and opportunities may be enhanced. Overall, skills intelligence allowing for more informed choices is indispensable for skills policies to make a difference in addressing the extent of mismatch of supplied competences and the occurrence of gaps. All these aspects are relevant at the territorial level. In fact, the outlining of policies and/or interventions in the domains of education and training as well as of youth, employment and migration is not solely a prerogative of national governments. It also occurs at the local and regional level. Furthermore, it is at this same level that labour market needs meet the skills supply and that future trends of job opportunities as well as cooperative approaches among different stakeholders of the labour market are shaped.

A report to the European Council by the Reflection Group on the Future of the EU 2030.

The independent Reflection Group was set up by the European Council under the chair of Mr. González to identify, analyse and propose solutions to the challenges the EU will be facing at the horizon 2030. It is composed of 12 members with outstanding expertise in their field of activity. They have also sought the opinion of experts from the academic and business worlds.

This report to the European Council lists a wide range of problems with which the EU and member states are confronted, for instance the global economic crisis and states coming to the rescue of banks, climate change and energy supply as well as the threats of terrorism and organised crime.

The Reflection Group is convinced that the EU can overcome the difficulties, if everybody - politicians and citizens - are decided to pull together and act in a decisive manner to develop this ambitious political project. It is therefore essential that citizens back up the Union and participate in its further development.

"In this study, three main drivers of the current demographic challenge in the EU regions have been singled out and have been used in making up the sensitivity index through their main components :
- Total population change;
- Changes in labour-age population;
- Population ageing.

In a global frame of reference, Europe presents a peculiar demographic situation characterised by: i) very low or below-zero rate of population growth; ii) steady growth or initial decrease of the labour-age population; iii) ageing processes which involve the entire population as well as its significant parts, labour-age population in particular.
Four critical areas have been singled out in respect to the EU27 regions’ sensitivity to the demographic challenge by 2020:
1) The former Eastern Germany, with some extensions westwards;
2) The North-western part of Spain;
3) North-western and Central Italy, with some extensions southwards;
4) All the Bulgarian regions.

(...)Some changes in the future population dynamics are almost independent from the future macro-economic prospects and the relevant scenarios. The cohort turnover by 2020 shall modify the demographic structure and trends. Future migrations, internal or external to the EU, may change only partially those turnovers, so that their impact can be foreseen with large confidence.
The two alternative scenarios – the pessimistic one, which foresee a severe and perdurable economic recession, vs. the optimistic one, which imagines a fast recovery driven by innovation – mainly affect only the migration components of the demographic challenge. In that, much will depend on the ways and territorial distribution of the economic recession/development. Also the involvement and response of the neighbouring countries in those processes will have important returns on the foreseeable future of the European population.
Results of both scenarios confirm that European regions in 2020 will continue facing ageing and immigration. In the pessimistic scenario, ageing is more diffused and this negatively affects population change. In particular: social risks and costs of demographic change increase in more sensitive regions, while the future growth potential is limited in less sensitive regions. In the optimistic scenario, demographic constraints are moderately less stringent. In this context, more sensitive regions may experience increasing internal disparities in population ageing and agglomeration; less sensitive regions may experience lighter constrictions in WAP and in the future population growth. Both scenarios would require supporting social and economic adaptation of the different territories to demographic change, stressing the relevance of cohesion policy."