"Europe is predicted to become a second-ranking economic force over the next 50 years, its share of world output almost halving from its current 22-percent share to 12 percent, a top French think tank reported Wednesday. Over the same period, the United States is expected almost to retain its 25-percent share, which will by 2050 be matched or even outpaced by China as the world's dominant economy.
'The enlargement of the European Union will not be sufficient to guarantee parity with the United States,' says the report from the prestigious French Institute of International Relations. 'The EU will weigh less heavily on the process of globalization and a slow but inexorable movement onto history's 'exit ramp' can be foreseen.'
Even that decline to a 12-percent share of the global economy is based on IFRI's assumption that Europe welcomes 30 million young immigrant workers from North Africa and the Arab world, to swell its thinning labor force. Europe's falling birthrate, along with rigid labor markets and early retirement, means that even the enlarged EU won't be able to keep up with U.S. and Chinese growth rates over the next five decades."
Write a comment