Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-11-11-Speech-4-168"
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"en.20101111.21.4-168"2
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"Mr President, demographers tell us that in order to sustain itself, a population needs a birth rate of 2.1 live births per woman. In the whole of Europe, the only country that is reproducing at sustainability level is Albania, or Turkey if you count Turkey as a European country – and nowhere else. According to one UN report, Europe, including European Russia, is scheduled to lose 100 million people over the next 40 years. Germany alone is going to see a shrinkage of its population by 20 million.
These are not projections about what might happen if we do not do something, as there is nothing we can do about it now since the decline in birth rates has already happened. The only question is how we deal with it. How did we get to this stage? What brought us to this pass? One does not want to oversimplify, as there are obviously a lot of things going on, to do with changing working patterns, the spread of contraception, the different role of women in society, and longevity.
However, I wonder whether one part of the problem is the way in which the state has expanded and squeezed out the private sphere, has annexed to itself jobs and duties that were traditionally discharged within a family – childcare, education and social security. The first generation raised with cradle to grave welfare or, in other words, to be excused the traditional responsibilities of adulthood, has also been the first to give up on parenthood.
We now face a choice between demographic collapse or importing 100 million people to sustain our numbers and pay our pensions. This should be the top issue in Europe and it is not one we can address by arguing about changes in employment regulation."@en1
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