Southern and Eastern Europe face a demographic cliff that no policy has yet managed to reverse.
By 2050, Italy will have 8.6 million fewer working-age adults than it does today. Spain will lose 5.2 million. Poland will see its labour force shrink by 28%. Lithuania has lost a third of its working-age population since independence and shows no sign of recovering.
These are not pessimistic projections. They are the mechanical consequences of fertility rates below replacement level for decades, combined with emigration that strips young workers from the periphery.
Europe welfare states were built on a ratio of roughly four working-age adults per retiree. In Germany that ratio is already 2.8. In Italy it will reach 1.7 by 2040. Either pension benefits fall, retirement ages rise dramatically, or contribution rates increase to levels that crush competitiveness.
Germany alone would need 500,000 net immigrants per year to maintain its current worker-to-retiree ratio. That level of sustained immigration has no precedent in European history and faces fierce public opposition. The politics of demography are brutal: the solutions that work are unpopular, and the solutions that are popular do not work.