Eurasia Press & News
One of the main contradictions of contemporary European integration is a question that extends far beyond demographic and social policy: can successful integration simultaneously mean the strategic weakening of individual states?
For decades, the logic of European integration has been guided by an idea quite appealing to the neoliberal arrangement of European countries, namely: the removal of barriers between nation-states, thereby promoting the free movement of people, capital and goods. Three positive trends emerge here: for individual citizens, open borders have become a symbol of freedom and new opportunities within a single space. For business, it means access to a vast labour market. For the EU, it means a more flexible economic system.
This is precisely the Eastern European paradox: European integration promotes economic convergence, but in demographic terms it may exacerbate the differences between the centre (Western and Central Europe) and the periphery (Southeastern Europe). The states of the region gained access to the world’s largest internal market, European investment, structural funds and free movement of labour. However, along with this, they have faced large-scale emigration, above all of young and skilled citizens. What looks at the EU level like increased efficiency and freedom of choice becomes, at the level of individual territories, a mechanism of accelerated depopulation.
Of course, this does not mean that free movement of people is the cause of the demographic crisis. The causes run much deeper, namely low birth rates, ageing, changes in family structure, increasing life expectancy, urbanisation and differences in levels of economic development. Intra-European mobility leads to uneven demographic decline, whereby the ‘Old Continent’ is turning into an ‘ageing’ one with a subsequent regional divide.
From demographic crisis to territorial divide
The demographic situation in Europe is shaping up as follows: we are no longer talking merely about declining birth rates or ageing, but about a shift in the very demographic balance of the EU. According to the latest Eurostat projections, the EU population, after slight growth, is expected to peak at approximately 453 million in 2029. After that, a sustained decline will begin: by 2100, the population could drop to around 399 million. That is, Europe could lose about 53 million inhabitants—nearly 12% of its current population.
Not only will the total population change, its age structure will shift as well. The share of people aged 20 to 64, i.e. the main working-age population, could fall from 58% in 2025 to roughly 50% by the end of the century. This will place additional strain on the labour market, pension systems and social spending.
At the same time, EU averages conceal a far more serious problem. Demographic decline will play out differently across countries and regions. Some territories will be able to maintain their populations through economic strength, migration and job concentration. Others will rapidly lose residents. Particularly vulnerable are many areas of Eastern and Southern Europe. Earlier Eurostat projections already showed that by 2050, the population could shrink in roughly two-thirds of EU and EFTA regions.
Thus, we can speak of a phenomenon of ‘periphery without population’. Eurostat has already documented this phenomenon in the case of rural areas. In 2015–2020, the population of predominantly rural EU regions shrank by an average of 0.1% per year, while the population of predominantly urban regions grew by 0.4%. At the same time, the working-age population in rural regions declined by 0.6% annually, and the youth population by 0.7%. The number of elderly, by contrast, increased.
In this context, the experience of Eastern Europe is of particular interest. After the enlargement of the European Union, it was assumed that gradual economic ‘synchronisation’ would narrow the gap between the western and eastern parts of Europe. European funds, investment and integration into the common market were supposed to accelerate the development of new EU members. In many areas, this process did indeed yield significant results: infrastructure was modernised, trade volumes grew, and macroeconomic stability increased. However, economic integration was accompanied by another process—the concentration of human capital in the most developed EU states. For the individual, this is an obvious benefit. A young Pole, Croat, Romanian or Bulgarian gains the opportunity to work in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria or Ireland, without facing the former institutional barriers. For the EU as a whole, this is also economically rational: labour moves to where there is demand.
But from the perspective of the state, the consequences are far more complex. Mass emigration ceases to be merely an individual economic decision and becomes a long-term structural challenge—individual rationality comes into conflict with territorial sustainability.
The case of Bulgaria is particularly telling. During its years of EU membership, the country has traversed a significant part of the path of European integration: it opened its market, gained access to European financial resources, and became part of the common economic space. Recent successes include joining the Schengen Area in 2024 and the ‘final’ stage of integration with entry into the eurozone in 2026. From an institutional standpoint, Bulgaria is an example of ‘successful’ European integration.
However, at the same time, the country has faced one of the most severe demographic crises in Europe. Population decline is occurring not only due to low birth rates and natural decrease, but also because of the prolonged outflow of the economically active part of society. According to Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute, in recent years the number of deaths has significantly exceeded births: the country loses tens of thousands of people annually through natural population change alone. At the same time, the Bulgarian example is not exceptional. Similar processes are observed in Romania and other Eastern European countries. They are united by a combination of three factors: an ageing population, prolonged natural decline, and the emigration of young professionals to more developed EU states. It is this combination of processes that turns the demographic issue from a social question into a question of strategic development.
A second paradox then emerges. External migration within the EU only partially solves the problem of ‘natural population decline’. According to Eurostat, between 2004 and 2024, the population of the European Union as a whole grew by 4%, but this growth was driven primarily by Western and Northern European countries, while a number of Eastern European states faced unprecedented population decline. Bulgaria lost about 17% of its inhabitants, Lithuania—15%, and Romania—11%. Migration flows are concentrated primarily where there are jobs, large cities, universities, transport infrastructure and existing migration networks. That is, external migration can sustain the overall demographic scale of the EU, but it does not necessarily stop the depopulation of its most vulnerable regions.
Thus, European integration has created a single space of economic opportunity, but it has not automatically led to an even distribution of human capital.
This process can be viewed as follows: mass emigration is not an independent cause of the crisis, but rather a manifestation of a deeper problem—the declining attractiveness of the state as a space for the future. A country may maintain political stability and demonstrate economic success, yet the decision of millions of citizens to seek prospects beyond national borders becomes a kind of assessment of the quality of institutions and trust in the future. The European ‘project’ historically promised not only freedom of movement but also the convergence of regions. Cohesion policy was supposed to reduce territorial disparities. However, demography creates a process that is difficult to compensate for through investment alone. This is a particularly sensitive issue for Eastern and Southern Europe. In these regions, free movement has become one of the most important symbols of European belonging and, at the same time, one of the channels of large-scale labour mobility. Any attempt to call free movement into question would inevitably be perceived as a rejection of one of the fundamental achievements of integration.
In this sense, emigration becomes a kind of ‘referendum’. Citizens are not necessarily expressing protest against their state; more often, they are rationally using the opportunities created by European integration. However, the cumulative effect of these individual decisions may lead to the strategic weakening of peripheral states.
Thus, the demographic price of open borders does not lie in the very existence of free movement.
Open borders remain one of the most important achievements of the European project. The problem is that, given significant differences in levels of development, they create an asymmetrical distribution of benefits. Stronger economies gain additional human capital, while peripheral states face a reduction in their own demographic and intellectual potential.
The main challenge for Europe in the coming decades is to find an answer to the question: can a single economic space remain sustainable if human capital is gradually concentrated in a limited number of states? Economic synchronisation requires not only investment in infrastructure and production, but also the ability to retain populations, create prospects and foster a sense of future within one’s own societies.
In this sense, the Bulgarian experience has significance far beyond the Balkans. It reveals the fundamental dilemma of contemporary European integration: open borders expand individual freedom, but at the same time they require new mechanisms to support states that face demographic outflow.
From a ‘Europe of Nations’ to a ‘Europe of Regions’: A New Level of Demographic Asymmetry
The demographic paradox of Eastern Europe becomes even more evident when viewed through the lens of the ‘Europe of Regions’ concept. This idea, which was actively developed in European political thought in the second half of the 20th century, assumed that the future of European integration would be linked not only to the interaction of nation-states but also to direct ties between regions, cities and transnational spaces. Within this approach, the region becomes the most important subject of economic development, capable of independently attracting investment, knowledge, technology and human capital.
Originally, a ‘Europe of Regions’ was seen as a way to overcome the excessive centralisation of nation-states and to strengthen territorial diversity within the European Union. However, several decades later, it is becoming clear that this process has another side. Given the free movement of people, capital and knowledge, it is primarily those regions that already possess competitive advantages that benefit: developed infrastructure, universities, innovation centres and a high quality of life.
Thus, European integration has created a space in which not only states but also regions compete. London, Munich, Amsterdam, Paris or Vienna compete for skilled professionals and investment not so much with individual countries as with other European centres of attraction. As a result, a new geography of development emerges: the most successful regions concentrate human capital, while peripheral territories face depopulation.
This is precisely where the connection between European integration and the demographic challenge of Eastern Europe becomes apparent. Formally, the countries of the region have become part of a single European space and gained equal access to its opportunities. However, in practice, the ability to use these opportunities remains uneven. Freedom of movement allows a person to choose the most attractive region within Europe, but it does not guarantee an even distribution of population across territories.
In this sense, Eastern Europe faces not only the problem of lagging behind the West, but also the problem of internal redistribution of population within Europe itself. A young person from Bulgaria, Romania or Croatia often competes not only in the national labour market, but directly in the pan-European market of opportunities. Their choice is determined not by state borders, but by a comparison of quality of life between specific European regions.
This trend creates a new type of peripheralisation. If classical centre-periphery theory described the economic dependence of less developed countries on more developed ones, then contemporary Europe shows a more complex picture: not only states but entire regions can become peripheral, losing population, innovative potential and the capacity for reproduction.
This is precisely why the demographic issue has become one of the central questions for the future of the European project. If Europe aspires to be not just a single market but a political and civilisational space, it must consider not only the economic efficiency of mobility but also its territorial consequences. Otherwise, freedom of movement—one of the main achievements of European integration—may simultaneously deepen the divide between regions that attract human capital and regions that lose it.
