No Balkan country has been spared a dangerous combination of migration and population aging.
Demographically, the situation of the small Macedonian nation is worse than that of many others. This Balkan country has lost a quarter of its population since the early 1990s. last census carried out at the end of 2021 shows a population decline of 10 percent over the last two decades alone.
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Many Balkan countries hope that EU membership will contribute to the “brain drain” – but even in EU member Croatia, the population of just over four million has declined by almost 10 percent in a decade (Photo: Google Maps)
Nearly 600,000 Macedonians emigrated abroad in the decades following the country’s independence.
In neighboring Albania, the situation is even more dire. 1.7 million people, or 37 percent of the population, have left the country over the past three decades. According to UN Demographic Outlook Reportthis nation of nearly three million inhabitants is expected to fall below the one million mark by the end of this century.
Both countries hope that early accession to the European Union would offer a better future and reverse the migration pattern.
North Macedonia’s accession negotiations have been blocked in the past by Greece due to a decades-long name impasse. Today, EU progress in North Macedonia and Albania is blocked by Bulgaria’s veto.
Serbia is another Balkan country hit hard by demographic decline.
According to World Bank data the country of nearly seven million is expected to have a million fewer residents by 2050. This has led Serbian authorities to make a startling analogy that the Balkan nation is effectively losing a city every year.
Hundreds of thousands of Serbs left the country following Yugoslavia’s dissolution wars in the 1990s. The country’s economy was again hit hard by sanctions on top of NATO bombing in 1999 to end the conflict in Kosovo.
According to an OECD analysis On the preparedness of the Serbian health system to fight Covid-19, estimates show that more than 10,000 doctors have left Serbia for Western Europe over the past 20 years, and that the health system shortage of 3,500 doctors and 8,000 nurses.
Some of the reasons the Balkan region has seen rampant migration over the decades can be traced back to the breakup of Yugoslavia, the civil wars and the economic difficulties that followed.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is perhaps the hardest-hit country in the region, with some studies indicating that almost half of the citizens born in the Western Balkan country no longer live there. Another striking example is Kosovo, which lost 15.4% of its population between 2007 and 2018.
EU Croatia has a similar problem
Croatia has been a member of the European Union since 2013. Since then, more than a quarter of a million Croatians have left the country in search of better-paid jobs abroad. The population, which numbers just over four million, has declined by almost 10 percent in a decade.
The Zagreb government is trying to reverse the brain drain and recently promised Croats in the diaspora up to €26,000 if they returned and started a business.
Greece is also showing worrying trends. According to the Greek Statistics Agency, between 2011 and 2020, the country’s population decreased by half a million people. The decline of the Greek population over the past decade is due to several factors. Clearly, the 2009 financial crisis played a major role, with many moving abroad or hesitating to start a family in Greece due to an uncertain future.
Aging plays a major role in accelerating the region’s population decline.
By 2050, Romania and Bulgaria will see the average age of their populations increase by at least eight years, according to latest Eurostat projections. Data provided by the Romanian Institute of Statistics shows how quickly the population has aged in recent years. Vâlcea County, Romania, went from 126 elderly people for every 100 young people to 185 elderly people, just ten years later.
An older population means a shortage of available labor, but also an increase in government spending on pensions and health care.
The cost of fewer young people in the Balkans has been calculated by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Institute for Development and Innovation. THE a study shows that the Western Balkans region loses billions of euros every year due to the immigration of its young citizens.
To estimate the economic footprint, the research takes into account both the costs associated with education – €2.46 billion – as well as the potential loss of GDP growth due to young people leaving countries.
It has been calculated that Western Balkan countries lose, due to youth migration, 3.08 billion euros each year in potential GDP growth and reduced consumption.
Adding this figure to the estimate of education spending gives a total of around 5.5 billion euros per year.
