LONDON, December 3. /TASS/. Births across the European Union (EU) fell to 3,665,000 in 2023, the lowest since comparable figures from 1961, the British newspaper Financial Times (FT) reported, citing data from the European statistics agency Eurostat.

Earlier, experts predicted that 4 million children would be born in the EU countries in 2023, the newspaper said. However, this figure turned out to be lower — it fell by 5.5% compared to 2022, marking the largest annual drop in history. The birth rate in the EU was at its highest in the 1960s, with about 7 million children born each year. The low birth rate will increase the burden on Europe's budget, as the number of working-age people is declining and health and pension costs are rising, the newspaper emphasized.

According to Eurostat, the downward trend in the number of children is most evident in the Baltic states, Finland, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain, where the number of births has fallen by at least a quarter over the past decade.