# Permanent resident population in Europe

A map of a former edition of the Atlas of Switzerland, the national atlas published by ETH Zurich. It opens only in the desktop atlas (version 4) for Windows and macOS, not in the web atlas; see the links below.

- Map: https://atlasderschweiz.ch/en/theme/permanent-resident-population-in-europe/
- Short title: Inhabitants
- Map id: 298
- Categories: Global Switzerland › Society and Culture › Demography
- Keywords: Demography
- Published: 2010-11-26
- Last revised: 2022-02-21
- Content language: English
- Other languages: [Deutsch](https://atlasderschweiz.ch/de/thema/staendige-wohnbevoelkerung-in-europa.md), [Français](https://atlasderschweiz.ch/fr/theme/population-residante-permanente-en-europe.md), [Italiano](https://atlasderschweiz.ch/it/tema/popolazione-residente-permanente-in-europa.md)

## Description

The population of the 28 Member States of the EU grew from 407 million in 1960 to just over 508 million in 2015. Population growth in the EU was strongest at the beginning of this period in the 1960s, when average annual increases were generally over 3 million persons per year, peaking at 4.2 million in 1963. The rate of population change slowed down significantly in the 1970s, and by the 1980s the average increase in population was around one and a quarter million persons each year. This level of population growth continued during much of the next 20 years, although there appears to have been a reversal in the trend observed during the period from 2003 to 2009, as the number of EU inhabitants rose by approximately 2 million a year.

Germany had the largest population among the Member States in 2015, ac-counting for almost 16% of the EU total. Together with France, the United Kingdom and Italy, who had similar sized populations, these four countries together comprised almost 54% of the total population of the EU. The thirteen Member States that have joined the EU since 2004 had a combined population of 104.7 million persons in 2015, representing a little more than one fifth (almost 20.6%) of the EU’s total population.

In a majority of European countries, populations continued to grow through to 2015, although the situation varied between Member States. Most of the overall population growth in the EU in the last decade may be attributed to an increased number of inhabitants in Spain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom; in relative terms, Luxembourg, Cyprus and Ireland recorded the highest population growth rates.

According to the latest population projections, Eurostat projects that the EU’s population will rise to a high of 526 million persons in 2050, thereafter falling to about 520 million inhabitants by 2080. The changes expected in population levels within the EU by 2080 will not be distributed equally across the Member States. At one end of the projections, the population of Luxembourg is projected to grow by over 125% from 2015 to 2080, while the populations of Cyprus, Belgium, Spain and Sweden are projected to grow by between 30% and 50% by 2080. In contrast, the populations of Greece, Slovakia, Poland and Estonia are projected to have shrunk by between 20% and 30% by 2080, with even stronger declines of between over 30% in Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, and Portugal.

## Sources

- Eurostat (2016): [Bevölkerungsdaten](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/population-demography-migration-projections/population-data)

## Data sources

- Eurostat: [Geobasisdaten Europa](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/reference-data)
- UN Population Division (2012): [World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision](http://data.un.org)

## Data owners

- [United Nations (UN)](http://www.unog.ch/)
- [Eurostat (Eurostat)](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/)

## Citation

The terms of use ask to name the Atlas of Switzerland and the data owners, and to keep the source references in exports, screenshots and embeds. Cite the map as:

> Atlas of Switzerland (2022): Permanent resident population in Europe. ETH Zürich. Map data © UN, Eurostat. https://atlasderschweiz.ch/en/theme/permanent-resident-population-in-europe/

## Links

- Map page, with the description and sources and a button that opens the map in the desktop atlas: https://atlasderschweiz.ch/en/theme/permanent-resident-population-in-europe/
- Open the map in the desktop atlas (version 4), where it is installed: adsglobe://map/298
- Download of the desktop atlas (version 4) for Windows and macOS: https://atlasderschweiz.ch/en/ads4-download/

For the use and citation of maps and data, see the [terms of use](https://atlasderschweiz.ch/en/terms-of-use/).