The EU is facing an era of vast social
change, reports Adrian Michaels, and few politicians are taking notice
Britain and the rest of the European Union
are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants,
including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition
over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it.
The numbers are startling. Only 3.2 per cent
of Spain's population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent.
Europe's Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will
have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys' names
recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.
Europe's low white birth rate, coupled with
faster multiplying migrants, will change fundamentally what we take to mean by
European culture and society. The altered population mix has far-reaching
implications for education, housing, welfare, labour, the arts and everything
in between. It could have a critical impact on foreign policy: a study was
submitted to the US Air Force on how America's relationship with Europe might
evolve. Yet EU officials admit that these issues are not receiving the
attention they deserve.
Jerome Vignon, the director for employment
and social affairs at the European Commission, said that the focus of those
running the EU had been on asylum seekers and the control of migration rather
than the integration of those already in the bloc. "It has certainly been
underestimated - there is a general rhetoric that social integration of
migrants should be given as much importance as monitoring the inflow of
migrants." But, he said, the rhetoric had rarely led to policy.
The countries of the EU have long histories
of welcoming migrants, but in recent years two significant trends have emerged.
Migrants have come increasingly from outside developed economies, and they have
come in accelerating numbers.
The growing Muslim population is of
particular interest. This is not because Muslims are the only immigrants coming
into the EU in large numbers; there are plenty of entrants from all points of
the compass. But Muslims represent a particular set of issues beyond the fact
that atrocities have been committed in the West in the name of Islam.
America's Pew Forum on Religion & Public
Life, part of the non-partisan Pew Research Center, said in a report: "These
[EU] countries possess deep historical, cultural, religious and linguistic
traditions. Injecting hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of
people who look, speak and act differently into these settings often makes for
a difficult social fit."
How dramatic are the population changes?
Everyone is aware that certain neighbourhoods of certain cities in Europe are
becoming more Muslim, and that the change is gathering pace. But raw details
are hard to come by as the data is sensitive: many countries in the EU do not
collect population statistics by religion.
EU numbers on general immigration tell a
story on their own. In the latter years of the 20th century, the 27 countries
of the EU attracted half a million more people a year than left. "Since
2002, however," the latest EU report says, "net migration into the EU
has roughly tripled to between 1.6 million and two million people per
year."
The increased pace has made a nonsense of
previous forecasts. In 2004 the EU thought its population would decline by 16
million by 2050. Now it thinks it will increase by 10 million by 2060. Britain
is expected to become the most populous EU country by 2060, with 77 million
inhabitants. Right now it has 20 million fewer people than Germany. Italy's
population was expected to fall precipitously; now it is predicted to stay
flat.
The study for the US Air Force by Leon
Perkowski in 2006 found that there were at least 15 million Muslims in the EU,
and possibly as many as 23 million. They are not uniformly distributed, of
course. According to the US's Migration Policy Institute, residents of Muslim
faith will account for more than 20 per cent of the EU population by 2050 but
already do so in a number of cities. Whites will be in a minority in Birmingham
by 2026, says Christopher Caldwell, an American journalist, and even sooner in
Leicester. Another forecast holds that Muslims could outnumber non-Muslims in
France and perhaps in all of western Europe by mid-century. Austria was 90 per
cent Catholic in the 20th century but Islam could be the majority religion
among Austrians aged under 15 by 2050, says Mr Caldwell.
Projected growth rates are a disputed area.
Birth rates can be difficult to predict and migrant numbers can ebb and flow.
But Karoly Lorant, a Hungarian economist who wrote a paper for the European
Parliament, calculates that Muslims already make up 25 per cent of the
population in Marseilles and Rotterdam, 20 per cent in Malmo, 15 per cent in
Brussels and Birmingham and 10 per cent in London, Paris and Copenhagen.
Recent polls have tended to show that the
feared radicalisation of Europe's Muslims has not occurred. That gives hope
that the newcomers will integrate successfully. Nonetheless, second and third
generations of Muslims show signs of being harder to integrate than their
parents. Policy Exchange, a British study group, found that more than 70 per
cent of Muslims over 55 felt that they had as much in common with non-Muslims
as Muslims. But this fell to 62 per cent of 16-24 year-olds.
The population changes are stirring unease on
the ground. Europeans often tell pollsters that they have had enough
immigration, but politicians largely avoid debate.
France banned the wearing of the hijab veil
in schools and stopped the wearing of large crosses and the yarmulke too, so
making it harder to argue that the law was aimed solely at Muslims. Britain has
strengthened its laws on religious hatred. But these are generally isolated
pieces of legislation.
Into the void has stepped a resurgent group
of extreme-Right political parties, among them the British National Party,
which gained two seats at recent elections to the European Parliament. Geert
Wilders, the Dutch politician who speaks against Islam and was banned this year
from entering Britain, has led opinion polls in Holland.
The Pew Forum identified the mainstream
silence in 2005: "The fact that [extreme parties] have risen to prominence
at all speaks poorly about the state and quality of the immigration debate.
[Scholars] have argued that European elites have yet to fully grapple with the
broader issues of race and identity surrounding Muslims and other groups for
fear of being seen as politically incorrect."
The starting point should be greater
discussion of integration. Does it matter at all? Yes, claims Mr Vignon at the
European Commission. Without it, polarisation and ghettoes can result.
"It's bad because it creates antagonism. It antagonises poor people
against other poor people: people with low educational attainment feel
threatened," he says.
The EU says employment rates for non-EU
nationals are lower than for nationals, which holds back economic advancement
and integration. One important reason for this is a lack of language skills.
The Migration Policy Institute says that, in 2007, 28 per cent of children born
in England and Wales had at least one foreign-born parent. That rose to 54 per
cent in London. Overall in 2008, 14.4 per cent of children in primary schools
had a language other than English as their first language.
Muslims, who are a hugely diverse group, have
so far shown little inclination to organise politically on lines of race or
religion. But that does not mean their voices are being ignored. Germany
started to reform its voting laws 10 years ago, granting certain franchise
rights to the large Turkish population. It would be odd if that did not alter
the country's stance on Turkey's application to join the EU. Mr Perkowski's
study says: "Faced with rapidly growing, disenfranchised and increasingly
politically empowered Muslim populations within the borders of some of its
oldest and strongest allies, the US could be faced with ever stronger
challenges to its Middle East foreign policies."
Demography will force politicians to confront
these issues sooner rather than later. Recently, some have started to nudge the
debate along. Angel Gurría, the OECD secretary-general, said in June:
"Migration is not a tap that can be turned on and off at will. We need
fair and effective migration and integration policies; policies that work and
adjust to both good economic times and bad ones."
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