Europe is a “demographic power”. The 25-member Union now has a population of 456 million citizens, outstripping that of the USA (291 million) and Japan (127 million), but very far from that of the People’s Republic of China (1,300,000,000) and India (roughly a billion). This is the demographic situation registered by Eurostat and updated on 1st January this year. According to the EU statistics agency, the population, which grew by 0.4% last year, shows a positive trend only thanks to the contribution of immigration, while the average age is increasing. The most populous states are Germany (82 million), Great Britain and France (59), Italy (57), Spain (42) and Poland (38). The smallest EU nations are Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta, none of which exceeds a population of one million. As for variations in population, Eurostat reports that the balance between births and deaths showed a plus of 200,000 last year, while the balance of migration registered 1.7 million “new entries”. The average EU fertility rate in the EU in 2003 was 1.48 children per woman; in the previous year it was 1.46. The countries in which the highest fertility rate is registered are the UK and Sweden. The states with the highest immigration rate are Cyprus and Spain.
