With little fanfare, the German IFO Institute for Economic Research recently published a report on population projections for Germany which states simply that the country’s population is shrinking fast.

The country has lost 1.5 million inhabitants since the last census in 2011 and it is estimated that it will have fallen from the 82.5 million in 2003 to 66 million in 2060, when Great Britain (if it still exists as such), will be the most populated country in Europe.

Roberto Savio

Meanwhile, a European Commission Population Policy Acceptance study found that 23 percent of German males thought that “zero” was the ideal family size, and this despite the 243 billion euros that the government spends each year in family subsidies.

The IFO report also states that, without immigrant families, the number of newly-born children would only reach 400,000 in a country of 82 million, and that even if German couples were to start having children again, it would take two decades to have citizens contributing to the social system.

It concludes that a decline in income and productivity because of the aging population is a serious concern for everybody for the near future.

This is happening in the European country which has most immigrants – close to 10 million.  Last year, Germany accepted almost 700,000 immigrants, placing itself after United States in terms of numbers. Nevertheless, even with that “open” policy, its population is destined to a massive decline.

“Instead of opposing populist parties with a campaign of facts, European governments try to neutralise them by incorporating their requests”
At European level, we see the same chilling trend. According to population projections from Eurostat, the official statistical agency of the European Union, the projected values for Europe’s population “are unprecedented in any human population.”

It says that “whereas in 1960 there were on average about three youngsters (aged 0-14 years) for every elderly person (aged 65 or over), by 2060 there may be more than two elderly people for each youngster: in other words, more grandparents for fewer grandchildren than in the past.”

Let us add to all this a Migration Policy Debate paper issued in 2014 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which states that ”contrary to widespread public belief, low-educated immigrants have a better fiscal position – the difference between their contributions and the benefits they receive – than their native born peers.”

“Where immigrants have a less favourable fiscal position, this is not driven by a greater dependence on social benefits, but rather by the fact they often have lower wages and thus tend to contribute less … Efforts to better integrate immigrants should be seen as an investment rather than a cost.”

Finally, the U.K. government has declared that, although migrants make up only eight percent of the population, they contribute 10 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), and that the economic growth rate of the United Kingdom would be some 0.5 percent lower for the next two years if net immigration were to cease.

Now, what is impressive is that those data remain for the specialists even though they have vital political implications. No newspaper has been publishing them and no parliamentarian – let alone government – has used them.

This simply because we now have anti-immigration (and usually right-wing and anti-euro) political parties which have sprung up in every European country, especially since the financial crisis of 2008, and this argument is now taboo.

The fact that the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) considers that Europe will no longer be competitive in just a few decades, because its aging population will not be competitive and a major burden on the social system, unless it opens the door to at least 10 million people, is totally ignored.

Instead of opposing populist parties with a campaign of facts, European governments try to neutralise them by incorporating their requests. After the anti-immigrant and anti-euro U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) took four million votes in May’s general elections, Prime Minister David Cameron has embarked on a campaign among European colleagues to demand that he be allowed to expel European immigrants if they do not find a job within six months and, among others, cancel their rights to social benefits.

This is a brilliant example of the difference between a statesman and a politician. A statesman does what is good for his country, even if that costs him dear.

When German Chancellor Helmut Khol was in favour of European integration and the euro, he had to face very hostile public opinion. For the Germans, the Deutsche mark was a symbol of stability and trust, and the idea of a new currency shared with other less responsible people revived memories of the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic. At the same time, Europeans were suspicious of German intentions.

Kohl decided to accept a non-German, Wim Duisenberg of the Netherlands, as the first governor of the European Central Bank to make the Euro possible.

Today, the existence of Pegida, a German far right anti-Islam political organisation which boasts a few thousand members at most, is enough to paralyse Chancellor Angela Merkel, a politician. She has voiced her opposition to the quota proposed by the European Union for sharing the load of immigrants entering Europe via the Mediterranean.

Her position has immediately been shared by France, with the United Kingdom and Denmark asking to be left out, and several Eastern and Central Europe countries agitating against immigrants … even though they are the countries which provide the bulk of internal immigrants in Europe!

So, we have the data, the projections, and the hard fact that Europe is heading for decline unless it changes policy and acts to increase its population. And, speaking of projections, in the meantime the population of Africa is expected to double.

When will the European political class wake up and realise that time is passing? (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Collage of news reports on trafficking in the Spanish press, from Mujer Emancipada de Málaga, an NGO that provides assistance to women in need. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain , Dec 23 2013 (IPS)

María came to Spain from Paraguay to work as a housekeeper in a hotel. But it was a false job promise, and she ended up in a nightclub, where she was forced to work as a prostitute.

One night she told a client the truth. Moved by her story, he started hiring her services day after day until he managed to find her a job somewhere else – and married her in the end.

It may sound like the plot of a movie with a happy ending, but it is a real case that happened recently, and was told to IPS by Felicia Carmen Marecos, a social worker with the general consulate of Paraguay in the southern Spanish city of Málaga.

It is just one of many stories of women who were trying to flee poverty and fell prey to human trafficking networks.

Most victims of trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation in Spain come from Brazil, China, Nigeria, Paraguay and Romania, according to the police, who estimate the number of victims in the country at 12,000 and the earnings of the sex trafficking rings in Spain at five million euros (six million dollars) a day.

María (not her real name) came to the country encouraged by her sister, who was already living in Madrid and was in on the scheme.

Women forced into prostitution tend to be drawn in with the help of family members, friends or acquaintances.

The young woman dared to speak out and file a complaint. But most victims do not do so “because they are coerced from their countries of origin,” Helena Maleno, an expert in migration and human trafficking with Colectivo Caminando Fronteras, an NGO that defends migrant rights, told IPS.

Many of the victims do not speak Spanish and are under threat, in debt, and unaware that help is available. They are also undocumented immigrants, and are afraid to go to the police.

Besides, “they don’t tend to recognise that they are victims,” said Paula Mandillo, a social worker with Mujer Emancipada, an association in Málaga that helped over one hundred women, mainly from Nigeria and Romania, in 2012.

The first European Commission report on human trafficking in Europe, published by Eurostat in April 2013, put the number of victims between 2008 and 2010 at 23,632, with the number growing by 18 percent over the three-year period. Of that total, 15 percent were children and adolescents.

In 62 percent of the cases, the victims – mainly women – were trafficked for sexual exploitation, while 25 percent were trafficked for forced labour, and 14 percent were victims of other kinds of trafficking, such as organ removal.

In 2010, Spain had the second-highest number of victims of human trafficking in the European Union, after Italy, according to the study.

The organisations making up the Spanish Network Against Human Trafficking are calling for a comprehensive law against the crime, which would penalise trafficking in all its forms and not only sexual exploitation.

They are also demanding a human rights focus, arguing that an approach based on crime prevention, law enforcement and control of migration currently predominates.

One example of this was the case of an undocumented immigrant who was arrested and deported when she reported to the police in a coastal town in the province of Málaga that she had been raped, IPS was told by sources with the Guardia Civil immigrant support team (EDATI) in this southern Spanish province.

And a 24-year-old Romanian woman, who was fined by the police several times for working as a prostitute on the streets of Barcelona, committed suicide on Sept. 23. Only then was it discovered that since 2000 she had been a victim of a trafficking ring that sexually exploited some 200 women, and that the pimp was her own husband.

“To raise society’s awareness about what is happening, it has to be made clear that trafficking is not prostitution or irregular immigration, but that there are undocumented immigrants and people who are sexually exploited who are victims of trafficking,” Maleno said.

If the authorities in Spain find signs that an undocumented immigrant is a victim of trafficking, they must inform her that she has a 30-day grace period, when deportation procedures are suspended.

During that period, she receives advice and support from specialist organisations, and decides whether to report the crime and work with the police and judicial authorities in the investigation.

If she cooperates, she is eligible for a residency permit, under a 2009 reform of the law on aliens.

“It’s a problem for the prosecution of the crime to be based on whether or not the victim files a formal complaint. Even if they don’t report the crime, their human rights must be protected,” and that means not deporting them to their countries of origin, where their lives may be in danger, Maleno said.

Many Nigerian women who fall prey to trafficking networks have made a hazardous journey, involving walking across part of the Sahara desert, often pregnant or with children, to Morocco, where they take ‘pateras’ – small, flimsy boats used to traffic immigrants from North Africa – to the Spanish coast.

“The 30-day grace period is very short compared to what they have gone through,” said Maleno. In countries like Norway the period is six months, and NGOs participate in identifying victims, the Colectivo Caminando Fronteras activist pointed out.

Human trafficking was not classified as a crime in Spain’s penal code until December 2010. It is now punishable by sentences of five to 10 years in prison.

In the four cases that since then have resulted in firm convictions, 10 perpetrators were found guilty, Marta González, who heads Proyecto Esperanza of the Congregación de Religiosas Adoratrices, an order of Catholic nuns, told IPS.

According to Maleno, there is “an extremely big problem” in Spain involving victims of trafficking for sexual purposes from Romania, because they are legal immigrants, since Romania is an EU member.

For that reason, “they don’t enter into the circuit of protection established by the protocol against trafficking,” she said, adding that another problem is how frequently they are moved around the country and Europe as a whole.

The sex trafficking rings often use babies, whether to help women from sub-Saharan Africa get into Spain or to coerce them into forced prostitution, she said.

Until this year, when pateras landed on the coast, the authorities did not identify the babies. But now they have started to take their fingerprints, and are increasingly carrying out DNA tests on women and children at border posts, to verify that they are related, Maleno said.

In September, the government granted asylum for the first time to a woman who was a victim of a sexual exploitation network – a Nigerian mother of a three-year-old girl, who arrived by patera in late 2010 and decided to report and fight against the trafficking ring.

A riot policeman in Greece attacks a protester during an anti-austerity rally in Athens. Credit: PIAZZA del POPOLO/CC-BY-2.0

By Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Nov 16 2012 (IPS)

The austerity programmes being rolled out in virtually every member state of the European Union (EU) – particularly in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy – have failed to reach their stated objective of consolidating public finances in order to solve sovereign debt crises.

Instead, these programmes – which entail massive public spending cuts in sectors such as education, health and governance – are “leading to collective folly” and even to “a social breakdown” across the continent, according to numerous economic experts.

Far from solving the debt crisis, as promised, the current fiscal consolidation plans will result in higher debt-GDP ratios in the EU in 2013, according to recent research.

Several reports have now confirmed what economists and activists warned months and even years ago: that the economic crisis, triggered by the financial collapse of 2007-2008 and the subsequent state-sponsored bailout of banks and investment funds, has resulted in higher unemployment and poverty rates in every country.

According to figures published by the official European statistics office, Eurostat, youth unemployment in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain is presently above 30 percent.

The situation is particularly difficult in Greece, where youth unemployment has more than doubled since 2008, to reach 55.4 percent in 2012. In Spain, where a 37 percent youth unemployment rate was the norm in 2008, the crisis has rendered over 50 percent of the youth labour force jobless.

Further deterioration of the social climate in Greece, where unions have orchestrated a wave of general strikes against yet another bout of state budget cuts, this time worth 17 billion dollars, augurs ill for the future of the Union under the shadow of austerity.

In its newest Global Prospects Report, released on Nov. 5, the London-based Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) predicts that the Eurozone recession will continue through 2013, with only “marginal growth … likely” in 2014.

According to the CEBR, the outlook is particularly calamitous in Greece, Italy, and Spain, with negative economic growth prospects. The report forecasts contractions of gross domestic product (GDP) in all three countries for 2013, of seven, 1.8, and 2.2 percent respectively.

“The economic situation in some parts of Europe is moving from bad to catastrophic,” Douglas McWilliams, chief executive of CEBR and a co‐author of the report, told IPS. “There is a danger that the economic problems will spill over into social breakdown in many areas of Europe as unemployment soars and governments run out of money.”

Yet another analysis of the economic and social situation in Europe, released Nov. 1 and authored by two leading economists at the London-based National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), goes even further, arguing that the austerity programmes across the continent are “self-defeating”.

The NIESR’s most benign scenario for 2013 forecasts a worsening of the present depression. According to their calculations, the austerity programmes will have a negative impact on the debt-growth ratios of 8.9 percent in Greece, 7.7 percent in Portugal, 4.2 percent in Spain, and 1.9 percent in Italy.

Jonathan Portes, co-author of the study, told IPS that his analysis of the present fiscal policies in Europe leads to the conclusion that “while in ‘normal times’, fiscal consolidation would lead to a fall in debt-GDP ratios, in current circumstances…fiscal consolidation is indeed likely to be ‘self-defeating’ for the EU collectively.”

Youth hit hard by austerity

In a study released late October, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound), an autonomous body of the EU, emphasised, “The immediate future of Europe depends upon the 94 million Europeans aged between 15 and 29.”

According to the study, the youth unemployment rate was 33.6 percent (or 19.5 million people) in 2011, “the lowest level ever recorded in the history of the European Union”.

However, there is huge variation between EU member states, with rates varying from below 7 percent in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, to above 17 percent in Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, and Spain.

“The consequences of a lost generation are not merely economic,” the Eurofound report warns, “but are societal, with the risk of young people opting out of democratic participation in society.”

The drain of an unproductive youth force – in terms of lost output – amounts to some 153 billion euros annually, or 1.2 percent of the EU’s GDP, according to the Eurofound report.

Stefano Scarpetta, deputy director for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), charged that Europe was “failing in its social contract” with the young, and warned that political disenchantment could reach levels similar to those that sparked the North African uprisings that have been dubbed the Arab Spring.

According to a report released last May by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), unemployment among young people in North Africa jumped five percentage points in 2011, to 27.9 percent.

“North Africa and the Middle East stand out in terms of their overall unemployment problem and these are the only two regions where the unemployment rate exceeded 10 percent in 2011 for the population aged 15 and above,” according to the ILO.

That situation is now true in various EU member states, where discontent has emerged in the form of ‘indignados’ in Spain and mass youth mobilisations in Portugal, Greece, and elsewhere in Southern Europe.

Peter Matjasic, president of the European Youth Forum, the representative body of more than 90 national youth councils and international youth NGOs, urged the EU to make the European “vision (of a social democratic society) a reality for a generation.”

Matjasic also demanded that expectations raised by the bestowal of the Nobel Peace Prize upon the EU this year be fulfilled. “The Nobel committee (talked) of the success of the ‘European dream’ and European leaders this week spoke about strengthening it. But without investing in youth now, it is in danger of becoming a lost dream.”

(END)