The ‘youth deserts’ in eastern and southern Europe

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/02/germany-spain-scramble-reverse-the-flight-youth-eastern-europe  Quoting:

European powers are adopting urgent measures to tackle a stark demographic shift that is leaving some eastern and southern parts of the continent facing terminal decline.

While Boris Johnson seeks steep cuts in the number of unskilled workers arriving in Britain, a number of European nations including Spain, Germany and south-east European countries are desperately seeking to level up societies upended by emigration and ageing. Germany is changing the law this week to make it easier for migrants from outside the EU to come to work, in an attempt to plug a yawning skills gap in an ageing labour market with more than 1m job vacancies. Spain, meanwhile, is scrambling to reverse dramatic depopulation of its interior by promising improved digital connectivity and support for industrial hubs and startups.

[Greener = Younger & Pinker = Older]


The EU has for the first time appointed a commission vice president for demography, Dubravka Šuica, to address the unintended consequences of its free movement policy. She said she wanted to reverse the trend of young people abandoning home towns and countries, with plans including extra funds to boost local economies and free wifi in every EU village by 2024. “I understand young people who want to create new skills, new friends and different ways of life in different countries,” she said, but she added that the trend must be reversed, otherwise some member states would not be sustainable because they would lack a labour force.

Eastern European countries have complained that brain drain is skewing the European project against them: Croatia’s prime minister recently demanded an EU-wide response, warning that depopulation threatened Croatia’s very survival. Šuica said demographic imbalance was not only an east-west issue but also affected western countries as people quit small towns for city life.

I read about this years ago in an article about a Portuguese village that was filled with the elderly. There were no children or babies left, and most youth had gone to the city. It's a sad consequence of low birth rates and industrialization.

If I were a little more cynical I would say that these youth desserts are the result of social engineering. Keeping people concentrated in big cities as a means to depopulate and manipulate the human race.