Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-19-Speech-3-349"
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"en.20081119.23.3-349"2
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Madam President, as we are unfortunately required to spend part of this evening together, I shall try, on behalf of the Council and also of Commissioner Potočnik, to summarise the Council’s aims concerning demographic trends and their economic and social impact.
For the Council, the truly important guiding principle is that, in addition to better balance between work and private life, there should be more efforts to balance the roles played by men and women within households, and to offer more good quality infrastructure to care for children and other dependent people.
In an ageing society, the contribution of young people will become all the more important. We will have to intensify our efforts to combat youth unemployment and reduce early school-leaving. Investing in children must be our top priority if we want to improve young people’s prospects.
We must also recognise that Europe is affected more by retirement than by ageing, although these trends are worrying and, without healthy public finances, it will be impossible to tackle all the consequences of demographic ageing.
This means that we must pay close attention to the viability of retirement schemes, and pursue the reforms underway to modernise these schemes and make them sustainable, which is in line with the current strategy within the Union. It will also be useful to encourage older workers to carry on working and, in particular, to provide meaningful incentives.
The Council is fully aware of all of these challenges and has adopted the recommendations of the social protection committee concerning views on demographic change in Europe and the challenges this poses. In addition, the Council adopted, on 30 May, the conclusions concerning policies that are in line with families’ needs, and established a series of initiatives to support family policies.
In this context, an informal meeting was held on 18 September, organised by the French Presidency, involving ministers responsible for the family. At this meeting, the discussions centred on child care, as a way of ensuring balance between work and family life, and the protection of children on the Internet.
To conclude: the Council invites the Commission to view the first forum on the future demographics of Europe, which took place in Brussels on 30 and 31 October, as a starting point for a structured and lasting dialogue, within and between Member States, and to act so that the Commission may provide support to the relevant bodies to find the best strategies for responding to this demographic change.
Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the ageing population, in other words the increase in the proportion of older people, is primarily the result of economic, social and medical progress which offers Europeans the opportunity to live long lives in a level of comfort and safety which is unprecedented in history. However, this is also one of the greatest challenges facing the Union in the coming years.
This ageing is the result of four factors. The first is that the number of children per woman is low, with an Union average of 1.5 children, which is far below replacement rate, which needs to be slightly higher than 2 – 2.1 – in order to stabilise population size.
The second factor is the decline in fertility over recent decades, which followed the ‘baby boom’ of the post-war years and which means that today these ‘baby boomers’ are swelling the 45 to 65 age group.
Having increased by eight years since 1960, life expectancy at birth – and this is the third factor – may well continue to increase, with an additional five years added between now and 2050, or perhaps even more.
The fourth and final factor is that Europe, as you know, is experiencing growing migration from other countries. In 2004, there were 1.8 million immigrants, which is more than the United States experienced relative to total population, but this level of immigration only partly compensates for the effects of low fertility and increased life expectancy.
We therefore find ourselves in a situation in which the level of dependence, in other words, the number of people aged over 65 compared to the number of people between 15 and 64 years of age is set to double, and will rise to over 50% between now and 2050, which means that the Union, which previously had four people of working age for every person over 65, will see this figure fall to just two.
The demographic change that I have just described, taking into account these factors, is accompanied by profound social change affecting family structures, all of which results in an increasing number of older people living alone and very old people being dependent on others.
As you know, most of these issues fall within the scope of Member States. This is the case for family policy, social security systems and, in large part, fiscal policy, and the Council, given these facts, believes that the Lisbon strategy and the open coordination method form the framework within which Member States should work in this area, and most Member States agree that no new structures should be put in place."@en1
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