Samizdata

Barely a working day goes by when I don’t read some nauseating editorial in some left-of-centre organ warning of the ‘dangers’ of becoming more like America and demanding even greater integration into Europe.

Europe, you see, is more attuned to concepts of ‘social justice’ and therefore kindler, gentler and more humane. A place where those vulgar ‘market forces’ are tamed and brought under ‘democratic control’. Yes, Europe is an altogether more civilised model of society.

Except that I think we now have pretty incontrovertible proof that the European ‘model’ is actually a long, drawn-out extinction event:

Fertility rates across Europe are now so low that the continent’s population is likely to drop markedly over the next 50 years. The UN, whose past population predictions have been fairly accurate, predicts that the world’s population will increase from just over 6 billion in 2000 to 8.9 billion by 2050. During the same period, however, the population of the 27 countries that should be members of the EU by 2007 is predicted to fall by 6%, from 482m to 454m. For countries with particularly low fertility rates, the decline is dramatic. By 2050 the number of Italians may have fallen from 57.5m in 2000 to around 45m; Spain’s population may droop from 40m to 37m. Germany, which currently has a population of around 80m, could find itself with just 25m inhabitants by the end of this century, according to recent projections by Deutsche Bank, which adds: “Even assuming (no doubt unrealistically high) annual immigration of 250,000, Germany’s population would decline to about 50m by 2100.”

This is what happens when children are taxed out of the family budget. And it gets worse:

A recent report from the French Institute of International Relations predicts that, by the middle of the century, the EU’s GDP will be growing at just over 1% a year compared with more than 2% in North America and at least 2.5% in China. The EU, the report gloomily concludes, faces a “slow but inexorable ‘exit from history’ “.

I really do recommend that the whole article be read in order to fully appreciate that Europe’s political classes are standing hip-deep in merde. Nor are there any easy solutions to which they can turn. Radical reforms are politically impossible and even cranking up the immigration rates by several orders is not going to save them. If the host population is dying out then the newcomers are not so much ‘immigrants’ as replacements; the demographic equivalent of a blood transfusion. Out with the old and in the with new. Still, there is a possibility that the ‘new’ Europeans might have taken on board the object lesson and realised that socialism is suicide. Perhaps that is the solution after all.

So Europe will probably try to muddle through its demographic problem. There will be some pension reform, a bit more immigration, more family-friendly policies, higher taxes, growing fiscal problems for many governments and slower economic growth. With luck the European Union will avoid or postpone a really huge economic crisis. But the political and economic renaissance of Europe that was predicted at the European convention is likely to be stillborn.

Yes it really was as recent as a few months back that my ears were assailed with all those triumphal, confident proclamations that a ‘United Europe’ was soon going to overtake the USA as an economic power. I laughed my arse off. Now I almost pity them.

The future is not bright. They don’t need shades.