UN says Europe needs more immigrants

Although many southern EU member states, including Malta, are trying to introduce measures to restrain, as much as possible, the influx of immigrants into their territory, a new study unveiled by the United Nations shows that effectively the EU will need to increase the intake of immigrants drastically if it wants to survive economically.

According to the 2004 world economic and social survey, issued by the UN, Europe's population is expected to decline by 96 million in the next 50 years even when assuming that about 600,000 immigrants a year are admitted to European countries over the same period.

The report states that "immigration can help offset some of the side-effects of an ageing population in Europe but would be nowhere near sufficient to salvage struggling pension schemes."

The report gives also detailed projections. It is estimated that France, for example, would have to accept nearly 90 million migrants until 2050 in order to maintain its 1995 support ratios, compared with the nearly four million projected at present.

Germany, the largest EU member, would have to accept more than 181 million immigrants, against 10.5 million projected between 2000 and 2050.

The report does not give any details on Malta as the country is not considered as an immigration country.

Figures published in the report show that in 2001, Germany had more than seven million immigrants. France was the second largest immigrant receiver, with more than 3.1 million, and the UK had more than two million immigrants. The European countries with the lowest number of immigrants are the Scandinavian countries. Between1995 and 2000, the European population would have shrunk by 4.4 million if five million migrants had not arrived during that period.

The number of immigrants has more than doubled since 1960 to 175 million or about three per cent of the global population.

However, recent increases have been concentrated on rich countries where one in 12 people are immigrants, and more particularly on the US, which is now home to one in five of all international migrants.

The number of nations where migrants exceed 10 per cent of the population has jumped from 43 in 1960 to 70 in 2000. At the same time, immigration policies have become increasingly restrictive, with a third of all governments now trying to reduce migrant inflows.