Eurostat: Superficiality or demographic manipulation in the European Union

Bucharest, April 17, 2026 – RBJ (By Constantin Radut)- The Statistical Office of the European Union published a controversial study the other day, in our opinion. It refers to the perspective of the community population, overall and for each country. The data do not bring much news.
The aging of the population of Europe and, in particular, of the component states, is a phenomenon that has been happening for several decades. The attempt of states such as Germany or France to influence this phenomenon, through aggressive immigration policies, has failed. Even the pecuniary attraction for professional performance categories is no longer showing its fruits. Poles and Romanians, but also Bulgarians or Hungarians, are returning in increasing waves to their countries of origin due to the worsening of the migrant status and the improvement of the standard of living in the countries of origin.
Although the phenomenon of aging is worrying, the bureaucracy in Brussels has not had the capacity to issue any “directive” for the positive diversion of this phenomenon. And this is due to the fact that in Europe there are no more demographers of the stature of Alfred Sauvy and the science of population has been buried since the end of the last century. It is worth noting a fact that is less known to the young bureaucrats in Brussels. Namely, that the first World Congress on Demography took place in Bucharest, in 1974. In the capital of Romania, the event held under the auspices of the UN adopted a World Plan of Action on Population, moving from academic debates to intergovernmental political decisions.
Currently, we no longer have debates, nor government policies.
Instead, we have manipulative estimates. Such as the one published on the Eurostat website, entitled “EU’s population projected to drop by 11.7% by 2100”. We learn from this analysis that the EU population, today at the level of approximately 450 million inhabitants, will reach under 400 million individuals in 75 years. Almost how many inhabitants there are in the US today.
As far as we know, no great demographer has dared to calculate the population of a community over a three-four generation period. Eurostat is capable of it, however. Maybe it called on some beginner AI module?
Otherwise, some paradoxes in this estimate cannot be explained, as explained by those who developed these texts and graphs. In general, the population in Western countries is decreasing more slowly than that in Eastern countries, or even increasing, although the degree of population aging in Western countries is much higher than that in Eastern EU countries.
Let’s take Belgium and Bulgaria for comparison, countries with a relatively close population, in number. In 2025, Belgium had 11.883 million inhabitants, and Bulgaria had 6.437 million inhabitants. In 2100, Eurostat says, Belgium’s population grows to 12.301 million, and Bulgaria’s falls to 4.637 million.
On what basis? We don’t know, the study says.
What the demographic data shows. In 2024, Bulgaria’s fertility rate was 1.72 children per woman, the highest in the EU, close to 2, the number of children needed for future generations to cover the optimal level of a country’s population. The level of aging (average age) of the Bulgarian population was 47.1 years in 2024, compared to the EU average of 44.7 years.
Belgium had a fertility rate of 1.44 children per woman, much lower than Bulgaria’s and close to the EU average of 1.34. In 2024, the average age of the Belgian population was 42 years old. A younger population, but not fertile, does not have children.
So, where does the discrepancy in Eurostat’s estimates for the year 2100 come from? A population that has only a very small number of children grows between 2025 and 2100 (Belgium’s), while Bulgaria’s decreases drastically.
There are many such paradoxes and we do not know how Eurostat can explain them.
Are they just manipulations of the numbers? For whose benefit?