This interview is copyright-free for publication by your media

Christian Brunhardt: Europe’s states must take long-term action to counteract decline and ageing of the population.

Interview with Christian Brunhardt (Liechtenstein, Christian Democrat), Rapporteur on population questions in the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly

Strasbourg, 6 April 2005

Christian Brunhardt believes that long-term measures are needed to counter the falling birth-rates and ageing of the population recorded for years in nearly all the countries of Europe. Inevitably, people will have to work longer – a point already made in the report which he submitted to the Parliamentary Assembly last October.

Question: Demographic disaster seems to be a real prospect in Europe: birth-rates are falling, and the population is ageing. This has been the trend for years, and the situation is expected to get even worse by 2050. What are your hopes for the seminar which will be discussing all of this at the Council of Europe on Thursday and Friday?

Christian Brunhardt: The main thing is for countries to do something definite about the problem, whether the voters like it or not. A lot of politicians have been trying to gloss things over. They tell us that pensions are safe for the next few years – but they don’t say anything about the longer term. I hope that the participants at the seminar will do some plain speaking. European countries must face up to the problem of falling birth-rates, and say clearly what their goals are - and how they mean to achieve them. At the very least, we need to do something to slow down the trend. Of course, getting back to rising birth-rates would be better – but that will be difficult.

Question: In your report for the Assembly on population trends in Europe, you call for a long-term policy, taking account of three main factors: fertility rates, death rates and immigration. Can you say a bit more about that?

Christian Brunhardt: To stabilise the population, we need a birth-rate of 2.1 children per woman. At the moment, the average in Europe is about 1.5. One reason is the serious economic pressures on young families. Many women study, and they want to do something about their careers first - but having a child often means putting a career on hold. To ensure that women are not forced to postpone having children, the state must help young families to reconcile children and careers. That means providing adequate minding facilities - day nurseries for example. Controlled immigration can reduce the problem, but not solve it. In fact, experience shows that second-generation immigrants are already in tune with the host country’s norms – so their birth-rate falls steeply. The only hope in the long term is policies which make things easier for families, not harder.

Question: How can we make sure that changes in the age pyramid – I mean the growing number of over-65s – do not end by bankrupting health insurance and pension schemes? Since ageing of the population seems to be a growing problem in nearly all of Europe, is there any way we can avoid having to raise the retirement age?

Christian Brunhardt: No, I don’t think so. We’ll have to motivate people to start working longer again. The number of over-65s will be increasing sharply in the next few years, and the number of 20-60 year-olds will be falling, in percentage and absolute figures. Putting it bluntly, fewer and fewer people will be working, and more and more needing pensions. Unless we raise the retirement age, that problem will be hard to solve. But we also need to tap unused potential – for example, by making it easier for women to go back to work after stopping to have families.