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In the eyes of the current Bulgarian political elites, North Macedonia does not deserve to be a European Union member state until it agrees that the language its people speak is not Macedonian a south Slavic language in its own right but is in fact derived from Bulgarian.

Bulgaria, an EU member state since 2007, is holding North Macedonias future in the union hostage regardless of how an entire neighbouring nation feels about it.

This standoff between the two has revealed a fatal flaw in the EU membership process.

Each step along the accession path requires full consensus by all 27 member states, and Bulgaria is using the most significant power given to member states that of vetoing a candidates accession by sticking to its 2020 veto on North Macedonias launch of membership talks with the union.

This, despite all other countries agreeing that the two-million-strong Balkan nation is more than ready.

Bulgaria questioning the countrys right to shape its own identity and history has only created bitterness in one of the most pro-European countries on the continent, says Nikola Dimitrov, deputy Prime Minister of North Macedonia and the main EU negotiator for the country.

Is questioning the Macedonian language in line with what Europe stands for? Isnt Europe supposed to be a continent where linguistic and cultural diversity is cherished and where all nations are treated with dignity and respect? he told Euronews.

Isnt the question of who you are and what language you speak a question for the people concerned and only for the people concerned?

North Macedonia has already jumped significant hurdles to show its commitment to join the union. Having achieved full statehood in 1991 only after the breakup of Yugoslavia, it arrived late to the nation-building party and first had to deal with its southern neighbour Greece also vetoing its use of the name Macedonia for the country claiming they had a region by the same name.

Resolving the name dispute took 11 years. North Macedonia was deemed a regional frontrunner after its 2004 application for EU membership, but it had to find a solution to the Greek veto it was subject to since 2008.

In 2018, what was then called the Republic of Macedonia agreed to go as far as to change its name to North Macedonia to overcome a veto from Athens that hampered the countrys EU and NATO accession and signed the Prespa Agreement with Greece to much praise.

We lost generations in the waiting room of the EU, Dimitrov explained.

We started our European journey after Slovenia and before Croatia. Both have become member states years ago, and we still struggle to open the accession talks.

"And just when we finally resolve the issue with the Prespa Agreement, embraced with major international praise and promises of EU accession talks, another mountain appears, he said.

Even after the latest disappointment, his government does not plan on giving up on EU aspirations and will continue to actively seek out a solution, Dimitrov told Euronews. But the veto is seen as damaging, both to neighbourly relations as well as the unions credibility.

If there is political will and leadership on the side of Bulgaria, I think we can find a European solution that would be good for Macedonian-Bulgarian friendship, for the European promise to the region, and for North Macedonia. But there is an if, because we already did our best, he continues.

And frankly, if my mother tongue, the Macedonian language, is the reason we cant move closer to the EU, so be it. Then the EU is not really what we thought it was a community of values, Dimitrov said.

The EU dangled the prospect of accession in front of Albania and North Macedonia whose accession process has been coupled for years before deciding to launch talks in March 2020, with all 27 member states in agreement and without any preconditions.

Then, Bulgaria had a change of heart.

Bulgaria sent a memo to the other members, demanding the EU acknowledge Macedonian as a written regional norm of the Bulgarian language. It also issued a veto on the opening of the talks so that everyone knew it was taking this seriously.

The most recent veto came earlier this summer, during the EU summit in Brussels in June.

While Deputy Foreign Minister Rumen Alexandrov tried to be diplomatic in a statement at the EU General Affairs Council meeting on June 22, highlighting that Bulgaria is open for a constructive dialogue to find mutually acceptable solutions, others were blunter.

We cannot say 'Yes' before being convinced that our neighbour won't be building its identity by stealing from Bulgaria's history," Bulgarian president Rumen Radev said at the EU Council summit only a couple of days later, vowing to keep the door to North Macedonias EU accession firmly shut.

Timing, too, is not on the Macedonian side. Bulgarian politicians are currently embroiled in a political deadlock following the July elections, a shakeup that has left the country without a clear frontrunner. This is also cited as one of the reasons for not lifting the veto on North Macedonias accession talks in June.

However, the yet-to-be-formed government in Bulgaria is unlikely to lift the veto or change the countrys stance on the Macedonian language regardless of its internal political upheaval.

Bulgaria held two elections in the span of three months, its second being in July 2021. The results echo those from April, with the same six parties and coalitions crossing the mandatory electoral threshold.

With any of the six being possible contenders for a government coalition but almost none seeing eye to eye Bulgaria will most likely end up being left with a hung parliament.

In the July snap election, the populist conservative coalition led by former PM Boyko Borissovs GERB party came in second. The proclaimed anti-elite Ima takv narod (There Is Such a People) party headed by TV host and musician Slavi Trifonov just came out on top with 24.08 per cent of the vote.

Despite the victory, Trifonovs party is expected to struggle with forming a government. Other parties that crossed the threshold, such as Democratic Bulgaria and Stand Up! Get Out! have already proclaimed they would not join any government coalitions lead by There Is Such a People.

The 2020 veto against North Macedonia was seen by many as a calculated move by former PM Borissov to appease his nationalist coalition partners an increasingly successful election ploy in Central and Eastern Europe ahead of the 2021 elections.

The move did not pay off. Neither Borissov nor the far-right nationalists platforming on it, such as Krasimir Karakachanov, whose party IMRO did not cross the parliamentary threshold, achieved the electoral success they expected in both of this years elections.

Karakachanov, a vocal Bulgarian nationalist, went as far as to threaten with sending a military regiment to North Macedonia to remove all the plaques bearing reference to the Bulgarian fascist occupation during the Second World War.

However, his inflammatory nationalistic messages fell flat.

Dimitar Bechev believes this is because the Macedonian language issue is not as polarising in Bulgaria as its political leaders believe.

Bechev, a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, thinks that for the populists to attract attention enough to win, there would have to be an opposing voice on the political scene to fight against.

But nobody opposes the prevailing belief that Macedonians, in fact, speak Bulgarian.

Its a niche subject, Bechev said. As a result, you have a consensus, and also because its such a boutique issue, you have the most radical voices dominating the debate simply because there is no critical voice.

This also means that Bulgaria is in no rush to find a solution. If everybody agrees on it, its kind of on the backburner. And its bad for the Macedonians because it means that there is no sense of urgency to resolve it now, he said.

What Bechev is saying is that an issue that holds one country hostage doesnt really ignite people in the other country. Except that an entire countrys, in this case, North Macedonias, future depends on the reception of this topic in Bulgaria.

According to Bechev, with Borissov most likely out of power, little is known about who will now own the issue in Sofia. In addition to creating the issue, Borissov positioned himself as the key to its solution and most likely planned a way out for North Macedonia, explains Bechev.

Borissov is a political actor many in the EU fail to understand. The burly politician became a mainstay of politics in the country by both causing and solving most of its crises.

Bechev posits that Borissov likely envisioned a scenario to resolve the North Macedonia issue that he bolstered especially considering his relatively good relationship with the government in Skopje in the past but any promises made to the Macedonian government before are now on life support.

Borissov has a track record of Borissov making promises to people and then throwing them under the bus. Which is what he did to [Macedonian PM Zoran] Zaev, he stated.

With his party failing to form a government after the April elections and now falling to second place, Borissovs return to power is almost impossible. He is seen as too toxic even by his own party members, who would rather have someone else take over the reins.

Even if hes back he wont care that much [about the North Macedonia issue], because his survival is at stake. Simply, theres nobody on the Bulgarian side who is willing to take any risks. So we are kind of captive to this issue, Bechev said.

Zaev caused a stir in North Macedonia when, in an interview for the Bulgarian news agency BGNES last November, he suggested that Bulgaria was not an occupying force during the Second World War.

Zaev, known as a political appeaser, made a costly domestic gamble -- seemingly for nothing, according to Bechev. Zaev is still viewed in a negative light in Bulgaria.

He went on a limb to accommodate Sofia. And frankly, you dont get anything better than Zaev. And now hes maligned as some sort of an anti-Bulgarian politician. Its frustrating, that he of all people gets the heat, Bechev said.

In its essence, this dispute stems from the consequences of World War II, when North Macedonia and Bulgaria were placed on opposing sides.

During the interwar period, the area of todays North Macedonia was a part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It was named the Vardar Banovina, an administrative unit equivalent to a province. In the vein of modern developments, the very name Macedonia was prohibited.

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia surrendered to Axis powers in 1941, and Bulgaria was given most of North Macedonia by the Nazis, as well as parts of Southern Serbia and Northern Greece, to administer.

Axis powers delivered on the unfulfilled ethno-nationalist desires of its allies on the continent, and thus entertained long-standing Bulgarian nationalist aspirations to control todays North Macedonia.

After its liberation in 1944, the Socialist Republic of Macedonia became one of the six republics of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia led by Josip Broz Tito.

Unlike Yugoslavia, after the Second World War, Bulgaria became a part of the Stalin led communist bloc and remained a loyal ally to the Soviet Union until the fall of top functionary Todor Zhivkov in 1989 and the first multiparty elections in the following year.

Bulgaria and North Macedonia within Yugoslavia were at loggerheads starting in 1948 when one side embraced a liberal form of socialism under Tito and the other championed hardline communism under the Warsaw Pact.

Democratization saw them become friendly again. Bulgaria was the first country to recognize what was then known as the Republic of Macedonia when it declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

The Yugoslav-era dispute is now being used as an argument by the Bulgarian side, claiming that the Macedonian identity and the codification of the language in 1944 was a way for Yugoslavia and Tito to minimize Bulgarian cultural importance.

The Yugoslavia argument is a way to rationalise what happened. Because its difficult from a nationalist position to understand that people who had this connection a few generations ago suddenly developed a separate national identity, Bechev adds.

Its a human reflex, to blame it on external forces like conspiracies and not to look at the complexities of the process. Somebody elses fault is a political machination, he said.

North Macedonia signed the Good-Neighbourly Relations treaty with Bulgaria in 2017 which included setting up a joint historical commission. The goal of the commission - the likes of which exist elsewhere in Europe and the world - is to resolve issues pertaining to important historical figures or textbook references that could potentially cause negative perceptions or stereotypes about others.

Macedonian historian Petar Todorov, a member of the commission, says that the work of the commission has since been stalled due to a difference in approach.

Our principle from the start was to come up with suggestions for the two governments that reflect what is important for both societies, Todorov said.

Unfortunately, the other side has an approach that emphasizes only what is important to the Bulgarian perspective and the Bulgarian society alone. We cant accept that solution because it wouldnt represent a joint space, rather creating another problem in the two countries relations.

Bulgaria is sensitive to being represented as a fascist occupier in the Second World War, he said. I believe its an internal problem of the Bulgarian society, and they should openly and self-critically discuss Bulgarias collaboration with fascists in the Second World War.

But the essence of reconciliation, whether between countries or within the same society can only come from a critical re-examination of the past. And if you try to hide it, to forget it, then the process is doomed to fail, Todorov points out.

But this is also a broader issue on the continent, according to him. After the end of communism in Europe, an anti-communist movement appeared that is very critical of socialism, Todorov said.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, former communist countries seeking acceptance from Western nations were quick to place fascism and communism on identical footing touting them as parallel totalitarianisms which planted the seeds for historical revisionism ranging from a rehabilitation of Nazism to communist crimes being minimized.

The European Parliament issued a resolution in 2009 condemning all totalitarian regimes of the past century. This bundled communism together with Nazism and fascism as having a shared legacy.

I think this encouraged the far-right movements to settle scores with socialism, while relativizing all of the crimes committed in the Second World War, Todorov explains.

Charged narratives involving a countrys fascist or communist past or both have transformed processes such as EU integration which were usually purely bureaucratic in the past.

This goes against the very role of politicians. Its their responsibility to create conditions for our work, in the sense that the politicians are not the ones interpreting history, and determining what is true and what is false, Todorov concludes.

Journalist and analyst Sasho Ordanoski believes that, although the Bulgarian veto echoes political stances from the Zhivkov period, it also unearths the geopolitical tit-for-tat that North Macedonias EU integration has turned into.

The competition between Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia about who will rule over North Macedonia is a competition for the Heart of the Balkans, he said.

And its not the first time this kind of energy has been generated, because whoever rules North Macedonia can freely claim they dominate the Balkans.

Greece did not question the Macedonian identity past the countrys name, as the Prespa Agreement itself proves. In the agreement, the language is called Macedonian: Its an international document sponsored by the United Nations which leaves no doubts as to a nations identity and its language. The agreement, which was also lauded internationally, cemented both, explains Ordanoski.

Ironically, as a southern Slavic nation, Macedonians felt less ostracised by Bulgaria. Greece was the hurdle they were expecting.

Although our relations with Bulgaria were never developed, there was no negative energy. After the last months of a very fierce Bulgarian offensive, where all sorts of things were said, the public in North Macedonia has been scandalised and confused, he said.

Many are saying that we should give up and so what if we do. If we enter the EU, we enter it, if we dont, well, then this should not be the price of our entry. And its a shame that the Bulgarians got themselves into a situation where a generation of Macedonians are reacting negatively, said Ordanoski.

Its not just the Bulgarian image that is suffering. The very idea of the European Union is in question, Ordanoski believes.

Its clear that this dispute is the result of many unanswered questions that have been bothering Europe for hundreds of years now. The EU was supposed to be the recipe and the solution for resolving disputes once and for all, with everyone becoming part of a large family without borders where we will exchange our experiences and cultures, he said.

Its a shame that this recipe the only one that could work because everything else is worse has been proven impossible to implement by the Europeans themselves.

Every weekday, Uncovering Europe brings you a European story that goes beyond the headlines. Download the Euronews app to get a daily alert for this and other breaking news notifications. It's available on Apple and Android devices.

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Could North Macedonia be the graveyard of the EU's ideals? - Euronews

A road sign directs traffic towards the Nord Stream 2 gas line landfall facility entrance in Lubmin, Germany, September 10, 2020. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke/File Photo

WASHINGTON, July 20 (Reuters) - The United States and Germany will take action against Russia if it uses the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to harm Ukraine or other Eastern European countries, according to two sources familiar with a bilateral agreement expected on Wednesday.

The agreement, hammered out in recent months by senior U.S. and German officials and first reported by Reuters on Tuesday, will resolve a long-standing dispute over the $11 billion pipeline, now 98% complete, being built under the Baltic Sea to carry gas from Russia's Arctic region to Germany. read more

U.S. officials insist they continue to oppose the pipeline, but said the U.S.-German agreement would mitigate the possibility of Russia using energy as a weapon against Ukraine and other countries in the region.

The United States worries that Russia could cut off energy supplies to Ukraine or other countries as a form of aggression, and also fears that Ukraine will miss out on transit fees for gas now carried on an existing land-based pipeline.

The agreement will avert, for now, the resumption of congressionally mandated sanctions against Nord Stream 2 AG and its chief executive. President Joe Biden waived those sanctions in May to allow time for both sides to negotiate a way forward.

But the Biden administration reserves the right to use sanctions on a case-by-case basis, in line with U.S. law, one of the sources said.

Germany also agreed to contribute to a new $1 billion fund to help Ukraine transition to cleaner sources of energy and improve its energy security, said one of the sources.

Details about the funding were not immediately available, but the money is likely to come from private sources, backed with government guarantees, one of the sources said.

Bloomberg News reported earlier that Germany would provide an initial investment of $175 million.

Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel failed to reach an agreement on the pipeline when they met last week, but said they agreed Moscow must not be allowed to use energy as a weapon against its neighbors. read more

At the time, Merkel said Germany had a number of instruments at its disposal, including the possibility of imposing sanctions through the European Union, to respond to Russia, if needed.

'GEOPOLITICAL PROJECT'

Officials from both countries have continued working out the details in recent days, and senior State Department official Derek Chollet visited Ukraine on Tuesday to discuss the deal.

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Tuesday that Washington still viewed the pipeline as a bad deal for Germany and Europe but decided that sanctions were unlikely to halt the project and focused instead on addressing Russia's potential use of energy as a weapon.

"We continue to oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. We view it as a Kremlin geopolitical project that is intended to expand Russia's influence over Europe's energy resources and to circumvent Ukraine."

Price declined to address the reported agreement, but said Germany had "put forward useful proposals" and they had made progress on the shared goal of ensuring that "Russia cannot weaponize energy flows."

Biden faces pressure from Congress to block the pipeline.

"Regardless of the foreign policy outcome the administration thinks it has achieved, there are still mandatory sanctions the administration has not imposed," Senator James Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement, referring to existing U.S. law.

Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Simon Lewis; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Peter Cooney

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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U.S., Germany to vow action on Russia in Nord Stream 2 deal -sources - Reuters

Valrie Hayer (FR, Renew Europe) and Jos Manuel Fernandes (PT, EPP) are members of the European Parliament and co-rapporteurs on the reimbursement of the EU recovery plan and own resources.

Can we still trust the European Commission when it comes to repaying European Union debt? The answer seems to be no. The only party who can count on the Commission is the United States.

The Commission is preparing to breach a legally binding agreement it sealed with MEPs and EU ambassadors just a few months ago. According to the deal, the debt was to be repaid with proceeds from new so-called own resources, including a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), additional charges using the Emissions Trading System (ETS) and a new EU digital tax. Today, all three of these new sources of revenue for the EU budget are in doubt.

This is a problem because there are only three options for repaying this debt: additional national contributions (meaning additional taxpayer money), cuts to European programs such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) or Erasmus, or making the digital giants, big industrial polluters, foreign CO2 importers and aggressive stock market players pay.

The third solution is the right one and it is the one we negotiated last year. The other two are unfair. And it would be strikingly ironic if the future-oriented EU budget were to be cut by 10 percent in order to reimburse a program called Next Generation EU.

And yet, U.S. pressure regarding CBAM and the EU digital tax has demonstrated the political weakness of this Commission, culminating in last weeks decision to postpone sine die the EU digital levy at the request of U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, due to global tax reform negotiations at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The OECD/G20 pre-agreement, which aims to set a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15 percent, is a major achievement, and the Commission is right to support it. However, the decision to postpone the EU digital levy is outrageous. When it comes to its strategic interests, we expect a geopolitical Commission not to yield to pressure from third countries. We did not vote in the EU elections for a European executive that prioritizes American interests over ours.

Additionally, Washington is still imposing several conditions on the final agreement. What would happen if the U.S. Senate does not approve the deal? Whether a final deal is reached or not, the EU digital levy would be a complementary way to protect European interests and further ensure tax fairness beyond this agreement.

As if this were not enough, the Commission also plans to take another unilateral decision today, deferring the two other new own resources to an unspecified date as well.

This is unacceptable. We urge the College of Commissioners to preserve its credibility by thinking strategically and acting in the interests of the EU citizens it is meant to serve.

We ask the Commission to take two actions: First, it must honor its commitment to present the new own resources as soon as possible, including the complementary EU digital levy.

Second, it should take advantage of the OECD/G20 agreement and channel part of the revenues that will be generated by this global reform on international taxation (around 50 billion in the EU) toward the EU budget and the repayment of EU debt. Member countries and third countries should not be allowed to keep all the money for their national budgets and leave the EU to cope with its debt repayment without new own resources.

The recovery plan must prepare to build an EU that will benefit Europeans for decades, implementing the ecological and digital transition and providing new and improved job prospects. However, without new own resources, the Commission would be leaving a troubling legacy for future generations: Debts from the past.

This is not what we promised them, and this is not what the Commission promised us in December 2020. Therefore, we will do everything in our power to put an end to weak decisions by the Commission and make those who do not currently pay their fair share of taxes pay for the recovery whether it pleases foreign powers or not.

Original post:
Why is the European Commission doing Washingtons bidding on taxation? - POLITICO Europe

The demographics of the European Union show a highly populated, culturally diverse union of 27 member states.As of 1 February 2020, the population of the EU is about 445million people.[4]

The most populous member state is Germany, with an estimated 82.8million people, and the least populous member state is Malta with 0.48million. Birth rates in the EU are low with the average woman having 1.6 children. The highest birth-rates are found in Ireland with 16.876 births per thousand people per year and France with 13.013 births per thousand people per year. Spain has the lowest birth rate in Europe with 8.221 births per thousand people per year.

.[5]

The European Union has a significant number of global cities. It contained 13 of the 60 cities which composed the 2008 Global Cities Index,[7] as well as 16 of the 41 "alpha" global cities classified by Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network (including Paris, Milan, Amsterdam and Brussels among others).[8] The following is a list of the ten most populous cities, urban areas and urban zones in the European Union, with their population:

The movement of people within the Union i.e. internal migration, remains limited; it has traditionally followed two patterns:

At present, more people immigrate into the European Union than emigrate from it. Immigration is a controversial issue in many member states, including Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and France.[citation needed] It was also a cited as a major factor in the Brexit referendum of 2016.

In 2010, 47.3 million people living in the EU, or 9.4% of the total population, had been born outside their resident country. Of these, 31.4 million (6.3%) had been born outside the EU; 16.0 million (3.2%) had been born in another member state. The largest absolute numbers of people born outside the EU were in Germany (6.4 million), France (5.1 million), Spain (4.1 million), Italy (3.2 million), and the Netherlands (1.4 million).[13]

In 2017, approximately 825,000 persons acquired citizenship of a member state of the European Union, down from 995,000 in 2016.[14] The largest groups were nationals of Morocco, Albania, India, Turkey and Pakistan.[15]

Spain in particular receives most of the immigrants coming illegally to Europe from Africa, probably due to its large coastal area and its proximity to and land borders with Morocco at Ceuta and Melilla; African immigrants try to enter the country by boat from Morocco or Senegal or by jumping the border fences. For example, during just the first weekend of September 2006, more than 1,300 illegal immigrants arrived on beaches in the Canary Islands[16] and estimates are that between 50,000 and 70,000 people enter the European Union illegally through Spanish borders or beaches. Border fences have been built at both the Ceuta and Melilla borders in an attempt to stop illegal entrance to the country. Illegal immigration is an issue in Spanish politics, and also a big human rights problem, since many people die during the journey. Spain has been Europe's largest absorber of migrants for the past six years, with its immigrant population increasing fourfold as 2.8million people have arrived, mostly from Latin America. Spectacular growth in Spain's immigrant population came as the country's economy created more than half of all the new jobs in the European Union between 2001 and 2006.[17]

The net migration rate for the EU in 2008 was 3.1 per 1,000 inhabitants;[18] this figure is for migration into and out of the European Union, and therefore excludes any internal movements between member states. Annual net migration has varied from 1.5 to 2.0million people since 2003.[18]

Since 2020, EU data is aggregated for the 27 remaining states. UK is no more a member due to Brexit.

Before Brexit, EU data was aggregated for 28 countries member of the EU from 2013 until 2020, including the UK.

The EU has significant religious diversity, mirroring its diverse history and culture. The largest religious group professes Christianity and accounts for 64% of the EU population in 2019,[21] down from 72% in 2012.[22] Largest Christian groups are Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Several EU nations do not have a Christian majority and for example in Estonia and the Czech Republic the majority have no religious affiliation.

European countries have experienced a decline in church attendance as well as a decline in the number of people professing a religious belief. The 2010 Eurobarometer Poll found that, on average, 51% of the citizens of EU Member States state that they believe there is a God, 26% believe there is some sort of spirit or life force and 20% don't believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force. 3% declined to answer.[23] These figures show a 2% change from theism to atheism since 2005.[22]

European indigenous (or native) religions are still alive in small and diverse minorities, especially in Scandinavia, Baltic states, Italy and Greece.[citation needed]

The recent influx of immigrants to the affluent EU nations has brought in various religions of their native homelands, including Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and the Bah Faith. Judaism has had a long history in Europe and has coexisted with the other religions for centuries, despite periods of persecution or genocide by European rulers. Islam too has had a long history in Europe, with Spain and Portugal at one time having a Muslim majority.[24] Large Muslim populations also exist in the Balkans and parts of Eastern Europe, due to a legacy of centuries of Ottoman rule.

The first official language of each of the 27 Member Countries has the status of an official language of the European Union. In total there are 24, with Irish, Bulgarian and Romanian gaining official language status on 1 January 2007, when the last two countries joined the European Union, and Croatian becoming official in 2013.

Before Brexit, English was the most spoken language in the EU, being spoken by around 51% of its population. This high proportion is because 38% of EU citizens speak it as a language other than their mother tongue (i.e. second or foreign language).[3] German is the most spoken first language, spoken by more than 20% of the population following Brexit.

The EU faces challenges in its demographic future. Most concerns center around several related issues: an ageing population, growing life expectancy and immigrant flow.

After hitting a historical low of 1.47 children born per female, the total fertility rate of the EU started to increase again, to reach a level of 1.60 in 2008.[25] The positive trend was observed in all member states with the exception of Luxembourg, Malta and Portugal. The largest increases over this period were observed in Bulgaria (from 1.23 children per woman in 2003 to 1.57 in 2009), Slovenia (from 1.20 to 1.53), the Czech Republic (from 1.18 to 1.49) and Lithuania (from 1.26 to 1.55).[25] In 2009, the Member States with the highest fertility rates were Ireland (2.06), France (2.00), Sweden (1.94), and the United Kingdom (1.90), all approaching the replacement level of 2.1 children born per female.[25] The lowest rates were observed in Latvia (1.31), Hungary and Portugal (both 1.32) and Germany (1.36). The increasing fertility rate has also been accompanied by an upward trend in the natural increase of the population which is due to the moderate increase of the crude birth rate that reached 10.9 births per 1000 inhabitants in 2008, an increase of 0.3 compared with 2007. The increase was observed in all member countries except Germany. The EU crude death rate remained stable at 9.7 per 1000 inhabitants.[18] The relatively low fertility rate means retirement age workers are not entirely replaced by younger workers joining the workforce. The EU faces a potential future dominated by an ever-increasing population of retired citizens, without enough younger workers to fund (via taxes) retirement programs or other state welfare agendas.[26]

A low fertility rate, without supplement from immigration, also suggests a declining overall EU population,[27] which further suggests economic contraction or even a possible economic crisis.[28] Some media have noted the 'baby crisis' in the EU,[29] some governments have noted the problem,[30] and the UN and other multinational authorities have warned of a possible crisis.[31] At this point however such a decrease in the population of the EU is not observed as the overall natural growth remains positive and the EU continues to attract large numbers of immigrants. In 2010, a breakdown of the population by citizenship showed that there were 20.1 million foreign citizens living in the EU representing 4% of the population.[25]

Over the last 50 years, life expectancy at birth in the EU27 has increased by around 10 years for both women and men, to reach 82.4 years for women and 76.4 years for men in 2008. The life expectancy at birth rose in all Member States, with the largest increases for both women and men recorded in Estonia and Slovenia.[25]

In 2017, Eurostat released yearly projections up to 2080.

The table figures below are in thousands.[32]

There is no precise or universally accepted definition of the terms "ethnic group" or "nationality". In the context of European ethnography in particular, the terms ethnic group, people (without nation state), nationality, national minority, ethnic minority, linguistic community, linguistic group and linguistic minority are used as mostly synonymous, although preference may vary in usage with respect to the situation specific to the individual countries of Europe.[33]

Defining ethnic composition requires defining ethnic minority groups.European Commission, funded the European Social Survey which considered three different way to define ethnic minority groups:

However main legal EU statistics published by Eurostat focus on citizenship and country of birth.

The largest groups that account for about 400 million people in the European Union are:

The rest are various smaller ethnic groups include Swedes (c. 10.2 million), Hungary (c. 9.8million), Austrians (c. 8.8million), Bulgaria (c. 8 million) Flemish, Croats, Slovaks, Silesians, Danes, Finns, Irish, Walloons, Lithuanians, Slovenes, Latvians, Estonians, Russians, Maltese, Moravians, Frisians and Basques.

More than 5 million ethnic groups

On current trends European populations will become more ethnically diverse, with the possibility that today's majority ethnic groups will no longer comprise a numerical majority in some countries.[37]

In 2011, almost a quarter of new EU citizens were Moroccans, Turks, Ecuadorian or Indians. The new citizens in the old EU27 in 2011 came mainly from Africa (26% of the total number of citizenships acquired), Asia (23%), non-EU27 Europe (19%), North and South America (17%) or another EU27 Member State (11%). In 2011, the largest groups that acquired citizenship of an EU27 Member State were citizens of Morocco (64 300 persons, of which 55% acquired citizenship of France or Spain), Turkey (48 900, 58% acquired German citizenship), Ecuador (33 700, 95% acquired Spanish citizenship) and India (31 700, 83% acquired British citizenship).[38]

In 2012, 34.3 million foreign citizens lived in the old 27 European Union member states, accounting for 6.8% of the European Union population,[39] of whom 20.5 million were third country nationals (i.e. nationals of non-EU countries). The number of foreign-born (which includes those who have naturalised or are dual nationals) was 48.9 million or 9.7 per cent of the total population.[40]

A total of 8.0 million citizens from European countries outside of the old EU-27 were residing in the EU at the beginning of 2012; among these more than half were citizens of Turkey, Albania or Ukraine. The next biggest group was from Africa (24.5%), followed by Asia (22.0%), the Americas (14.2%) and Oceania (0.8%). Romanians (living in another EU Member State) and Turkish citizens made up the biggest groups of non-nationals living in the EU-27 in 2012. There were 4.4 million Romanian citizens living outside of Romania within the EU-27 and 2.3 million Turkish citizens living in the EU-27; each of these two groups of people accounted for 7.0% of all foreigners living in the EU-27 in 2012. The third largest group was Moroccans (1.9 million people, or 5.6% of all foreigners).[41]

Approximately 20 million non-Europeans live in the EU, 4% of the overall population prior to Brexit.[42]

Age structure: (2006 est.)

Birth rate: 10.9 births/1,000 population (2008)[43]

Death rate: 9.7 deaths/1,000 population (2008)[43]

Net migration rate: 3.1 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2008)[43]

Marriage rate: 4.9 marriages/1,000 population (2007)[43]

Divorce rate: 2.0 divorces/1,000 population (2005)[44]

Sex ratio: (2006 est.)

Infant mortality rate: (2005)[44]

Life expectancy: (2005)[44]

Total fertility rate: 1.59 children born/woman 2009[45]

Live Births outside marriage: 40% of total live births in 2012[46]

The demographics of the member states of the European Union:

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Demographics of the European Union - Wikipedia

The European Union on Wednesday unveiled sweeping new legislation to help meet its pledge to cut emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55% over this decade. Virginia Mayo/AP hide caption

The European Union on Wednesday unveiled sweeping new legislation to help meet its pledge to cut emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55% over this decade.

BRUSSELS The European Union unveiled sweeping new legislation Wednesday to help meet its pledge to cut emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55% over this decade, including a controversial plan to tax foreign companies for the pollution they cause.

The legislation presented by the EU's executive branch, the European Commission, encompasses about a dozen major proposals, ranging from the de-facto phasing out of gasoline and diesel cars by 2035 to new levies on gases from heating buildings.

They involve a revamp of the bloc's emissions trading program, under which companies pay for carbon dioxide they emit, and introduce taxes on shipping and aviation fuels for the first time.

Most of the proposals build on existing laws that were designed to meet the EU's old goal of a 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels and must be endorsed by the 27 member countries and EU lawmakers.

World leaders agreed six years ago in Paris to work to keep global temperatures from increasing more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and ideally no more than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F) by the end of the century. Scientists say both goals will be missed by a wide margin unless drastic steps are taken to reduce emissions.

"The principle is simple: emission of CO2 must have a price, a price on CO2 that incentivizes consumers, producers and innovators to choose the clean technologies, to go toward the clean and sustainable products," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

The commission wants to exploit the public mood for change provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. It's already channeling more than one-third of a massive recovery package aimed at reviving European economies ravaged by coronavirus restrictions into climate-oriented goals.

The aim of the "Fit for 55" legislation, commission officials say, is to ween the continent off fossil fuels and take better care of the environment by policy design, rather than be forced into desperate measures at some future climatic tipping point, when it's all but too late.

European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans said that by failing to act now, "we would fail our children and grandchildren, who in my view, if we don't fix this, will be fighting wars over water and food."

Given the implications, the proposals are certain to be subject to intense lobbying from industry and environmental groups as they pass through the legislative process over at least the next year. They'll also face resistance because of the very different energy mixes in member countries, ranging from coal-reliant Poland to nuclear-dependent France.

Germany's environment minister, Svenja Schulze, said negotiations need to focus on maintaining the ambitious targets in a reliable way, be fair to the poor and ensure all of Europe "goes down this path together."

"National solo efforts won't lead to the goal," she said. "There needs to be a coordinated, massive expansion of sun and wind power from the North Sea to the Mediterranean."

Echoing the thoughts of some climate scientists, Oxfam EU head Evelien van Roemburg urged the member countries and lawmakers to be more ambitious than the European Commission.

"They must step up ambition by ensuring all EU climate rules contribute to carbon emission cuts of at least 65% in 2030, rather than the current 55%," she said.

Among the legislation's most controversial elements is a plan for a "Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism." It would impose duties on foreign companies and therefore increase the price of certain goods, notably steel, aluminum, concrete and fertilizer.

The aim is to ease pressure on European producers that cut emissions but struggle to compete with importers that don't have the same environmental restrictions.

The question is how the EU known for its staunch defense of open trade will ensure that the carbon tax complies with World Trade Organization rules and not be considered a protectionist measure.

Another concern is the need to help those likely to be hit by rising energy prices. The commission is proposing the creation of a "social climate fund" worth several billion euros to help those who might be hardest hit.

"This fund will support income and it will support investments to tackle energy poverty and to cut bills for vulnerable households and small businesses," von der Leyen said.

But Martha Myers, a member of the climate justice team at Friends of the Earth Europe, said the decision to extend emissions trading to buildings "throws low-income people into high energy price waters while offering only a swimming float of support to relieve energy poverty."

Under Fit for 55, a drastic acceleration in sales of battery-powered cars also is likely as the EU aims for a 100% reduction in auto emissions.

Hildegard Mueller, president of the German Association of the Automobile Industry, said the industry supports the EU goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050. But she said that goal can only be accomplished "if the consumers and companies can implement these goals."

Mueller warned of a "substantial" impact on jobs at auto suppliers that would struggle with the pace of the changeover.

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European Union Unveils Climate Plan To Cut Emissions By 55% This Decade - NPR