In a recent revelation, the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat announced that the EU’s population underwent a reduction of 265,257 individuals during the pandemic years associated with COVID-19. This noteworthy demographic shift occurred between January 2021 and January 2022, according to Eurostat’s press release.
The press release acknowledged the pandemic’s influential role in this decline. Eurostat pointed out that the reduction could be linked to natural population changes, specifically citing more deaths than births during the given period. Despite this decline, migration rates remained positive, indicating that more individuals entered the EU than those who exited during the same timeframe.
In addition to Eurostat’s findings, the European Commission conducted calculations that underscored the significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality rates within the EU. The commission’s estimates indicated an excess mortality of at least 872,000 deaths across the 27 member countries of the bloc in less than a year and a half.
This staggering figure implies that an additional 872,000 individuals lost their lives in Europe between March 2020 and July 2021 compared to the average number of deaths on the continent during the preceding five years. The repercussions of the pandemic, as reflected in demographic shifts and mortality rates, continue to be a matter of concern for the European Union.
