Douglas Carswell

800,000 migrants arrive in Germany

Germany, we were often told, is losing people. The birth rate is so low, according to the experts, that there will be many fewer Germans in the decades ahead.

Early this year, a report by the World Economy Institute projected that the population of Germany will fall from 81 million today down to 67 million by 2060. Others talked about there being eight million fewer Germans by 2050. An official think tank produced proposals about managing demographic decline.

That was all before the summer.

Now we learn that almost 800,000 migrants are expected to arrived in Germany this year alone.  Those reports that were just a few months ago talking about 100,000 new arrivals each year are looking a little redundant.

It could be that this year is a one off. An exceptional year for migration. Demographic projections are notoriously unreliable. Alternatively, this scale of migration might turn out to be a new normal. We cannot be sure.

I suspect that in 2050 – and indeed 2060 – there will be more people living in Germany than there are today, despite what the expert think tanks once told us.

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