Europe is trying to do two things at once. It wants to return people who have no right to stay more quickly, while simultaneously attracting foreign workers its economies increasingly need. In June 2026, the European Parliament and the Council reached a political agreement on a new Return Regulation. At almost the same time, the EU Talent Pool regulation entered into force, designed to connect European employers with jobseekers from outside the Union in occupations where workers are scarce.
Hence, this apparent contradiction reveals an uncomfortable truth that Europe’s political debate too often avoids: Europe needs migration. An ageing continent with growing labour shortages cannot preserve its prosperity by treating migration primarily as a threat. Europe needs controlled legal migration, effective integration and credible border enforcement, which are not contradictions. They are parts of the same policy.
An ageing continent needs people
The demographic reality is difficult to escape. According to Eurostat’s Demography of Europe 2026, on January 1st 2025, 99 million people in the EU were aged 65 or older, 22 per cent of the population, compared with 17 per cent twenty years earlier. As larger generations retire and smaller ones enter the labour market, Europe faces a basic economic problem: fewer workers will have to sustain societies in which more people need pensions, healthcare and care.
Germany already offers a glimpse of this future. According to the Federal Employment Agency, between 2014 and 2024 the number of working-age people with German citizenship declined by around 3.9 million, while the working-age population with foreign citizenship increased by around 3.4 million. Since 2024, foreign workers have accounted for all employment growth in Germany. In occupations where Germany already struggles to find workers, their importance is particularly visible: the share of foreign employees in shortage occupations doubled from around 7 per cent in 2014 to approximately 14 per cent. 
Of course, migration cannot be the only answer. Europe must improve productivity, invest in automation, mobilise people already living here and make it easier for women and older people to participate in the labour market. Better childcare is essential. So is training. But this argument is sometimes used to create a false choice: either Europe mobilises its domestic workforce, or it accepts immigration.
It needs both.
The EU itself acknowledges this. The regulation establishing the EU Talent Pool states that measures focused on domestic and EU workers alone are unlikely to resolve current and future labour shortages. Healthcare makes the challenge particularly obvious. According to the European Commission and OECD, EU countries faced an estimated shortage of around 1.2 million doctors, nurses and midwives in 2022. As Europe ages, demand for care will grow rather than disappear.
Who will care for an ageing continent?
Spain offers another perspective
Spain shows why Europe should take migration’s economic opportunities more seriously. According to Spain’s Instituto Nacional de Estadística, in the second quarter of 2026, employment reached a record 22.779 million people, while unemployment fell below 10 per cent. In June, Spain counted more than 3.4 million foreign Social Security affiliates, representing over 15 per cent of all affiliates, according to the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration. In hospitality, agriculture and construction, their share is substantially higher. Spain’s economy also grew by 2.8 per cent in 2025, compared with just 0.2 per cent in Germany. It would be wrong to claim that migration caused this difference. Germany faces its own structural problems, and Spain’s performance has several explanations. A serious argument for migration does not need exaggerated claims.
But neither should we ignore migration’s contribution. The Banco de España estimates that between 2022 and 2024 the foreign population made an average direct contribution of between 0.4 and 0.7 percentage points to Spain’s annual GDP-per-capita growth in its mechanical decomposition. Migrants work, consume, pay taxes and social contributions, and expand the working-age population.
The question should therefore not only be what migration costs Europe. We should also ask what Europe would lose without it.
Germany should know this from its own history. When West Germany’s post-war economy needed workers, it recruited them abroad. Millions arrived through recruitment agreements with countries including Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey. According to Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education, these workers made a substantial contribution to the Wirtschaftswunder. We should not romanticise this history. Many Gastarbeiter performed difficult jobs under poor conditions, and Germany often wanted their labour without accepting that they and their families might become a permanent part of society.
That mistake should not be repeated. Europe cannot keep needing people’s labour while remaining uncomfortable with their presence.
Europe is not the only one choosing
This becomes even more important because Europe is not simply deciding whom it wants. Increasingly, workers will decide whether they want Europe. Ageing societies compete for doctors, nurses, engineers, researchers, entrepreneurs and other skilled workers. An engineer considering Germany can choose another destination. A nurse considering Europe may have opportunities elsewhere. People compare salaries and careers, but also bureaucracy, housing, schools and whether their families will feel welcome.
Therefore, xenophobia can become an economic liability as well as a social one. In a 2022 survey by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, 34 per cent of respondents of African descent reported racial discrimination while looking for work during the previous five years. In Germany, the figure reached 56 per cent. Across the surveyed countries, 35 per cent worked in jobs for which they were overqualified.
A continent that complains about labour shortages while preventing people from using their qualifications is wasting human capital.
This is also why I find debates that repeatedly portray migration as a problem with Europe’s Stadtbild, identity or cultural appearance so damaging. Of course migration changes societies. But Europe should worry at least as much about what its cities will look like when hospitals cannot find nurses, businesses cannot recruit workers and welfare systems have too few contributors.
We cannot build Europe’s economic future around its demographic past.
Control migration – then make it work
Supporting migration does not mean supporting open borders. Europe has the right to control who enters. Governments must tackle irregular migration, enforce final return decisions and address integration failures. Pressure on housing, schools or municipal services is real in some places and should not be dismissed. Crime should be discussed without taboo, but also without turning individual offenders into representatives of millions of people. We must also distinguish asylum from labour migration. Refugees have a right to seek protection based on law and their individual circumstances, not because Europe happens to need their profession. We need to work intensively on capacity building of the institutions in order to be able to manage the asylum requests and properly go through the processing of refugees and asylum seekers. Labour migration, by contrast, can be actively designed around economic and demographic needs.
The state should therefore become a gatekeeper, enabler and protector.
As a gatekeeper, it should assess which workers and qualifications Europe needs and create legal pathways accordingly. As an enabler, it should help those who arrive legally participate quickly: recognise qualifications faster, combine language learning with employment, and remove unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles. As a protector, it must enforce fair wages, safe working conditions and labour rights.
That last responsibility matters because Europe must not solve its labour shortages by creating a migrant underclass. Migrants can be particularly vulnerable to exploitation when their residence status, language skills or unfamiliarity with labour law weaken their bargaining power. If employers use that vulnerability to reduce wages or undermine working conditions, domestic workers suffer too.
In that case, migration is not the problem. Failure to enforce labour standards is.
Europe must also avoid simply importing workers from countries that need them even more. According to WHO Europe, between 2014 and 2023, the number of foreign-trained doctors working in the WHO European Region rose by 58 per cent and the number of foreign-trained nurses by 67 per cent. International recruitment can strengthen European healthcare while worsening shortages elsewhere. Ethical recruitment, more domestic training and partnerships with countries of origin must therefore form part of the policy.
Change the migration debate and rhetoric
None of this requires pretending that migration always works. It does not. Integration can fail. Irregular migration creates political and administrative challenges. Public services can come under pressure. Governments that refuse to acknowledge those problems leave the field to those who promise simple answers.
But Europe has moved too far in the opposite direction. We notice migrants when something goes wrong: an irregular border crossing, a failed asylum claim, a crime, a political controversy. Successful migration is far less visible precisely because it becomes ordinary: the nurse beginning an early shift, the engineer developing a product, the construction worker building homes, the entrepreneur employing people, or the family whose children grow up to become doctors and teachers.
A society that remembers migrants only when something goes wrong will inevitably forget everything migration gets right.
Europe therefore needs a different approach, deepening initiatives such as the Return Regulation and the EU Talent Pool, not only rhetorically but politically: controlled legal pathways based on labour needs, faster access to work, investment in language and education, recognition of qualifications, fair working conditions and a credible opportunity to belong. In return, Europe can expect participation, respect for its laws and a willingness to become part of society.
The EU’s current policies already reveal the direction. It is moving towards faster returns for people without a right to stay while simultaneously building mechanisms to attract workers from abroad. Instead of treating this as hypocrisy, Europe should recognise the logic behind it.
Europe does not have to choose between controlling migration and needing migration. It has to learn how to do both.
An ageing continent cannot close itself off and expect to remain prosperous. Whether Europe stagnates or thrives will partly depend on whether it learns to manage migration as an economic and social opportunity without ignoring its challenges. Europe’s future will almost certainly look different from its past. The defining question is no longer whether Europe will change, but whether we fear that transformation or choose to harness it for progress.
