Share of Europeans over 85 'will triple' by end of century

BRUSSELS - Europe’s share of people aged 85 years and older will triple by the end of the century, rising from three to nearly 10 percent of the total population, according to a report published by the Bruegel think-tank.

The most obvious area that will be affected by an ageing population is pension policy. The old-age dependency ratio, measures the number of people aged 65 and more relative to the working-age population (aged 20-64). This ratio is increasing in the EU, projected to increase from 36 percent in 2022 to 55 percent in 2050 and 65 percent in 2100 1 . While there were approximately 2.7 workers per elderly person in the EU in 2022, the number will fall to approximately 1.5 in 2100.

More generally, Europe’s dependency ratio, which measures the number of people over 65 against the working-age population, is set to nearly triple from 36 to 65 percent in the next century, according to the report.

But the increase in very old people in particular will put even more pressure on Europe’s care sectors, which are already facing shortages, the report authors say, arguing for more investment in long-term care.

The report comes after Europe’s ageing population has been a hot topic for EU policymakers for a while, with leaders increasingly alarmed about the sustainability of the bloc’s pensions, healthcare systems, and public finances, in the face of persistent labour market shortages and rising care needs and shrinking workforce.

Examples of recent EU initiatives to combat labour shortages include the European Year of Skills, aimed at “upskilling” the European workforce, and the introduction of an EU talent pool, to attract more legal migration to fill up vacancies.

However, with the political climate having turned firmly against migration, it is unlikely that imported labour will solve Europe’s demographic challenges. Moreover, the focus on “upskilling” has been criticised for failing to address the challenging working conditions, especially in the care sector.

Gender equality

But the increase of the very oldest age bracket desperately requires attention, David Pinkus, co-author of the report, told the EUobserver. “It brings its own set of policy challenges,” Pinkus said, adding that the sustainability of pensions and the supply of long term care were “two sides of the same coin.”

With Europe’s working population set to stagnate, due to a combination of lower fertility rates and insufficient migration, the report emphasised the need for more public investment into the sector.

“Increasing the supply of long term care will be crucial, given the demographic trajectory,” Pinkus said, arguing that this was not just a question of fighting labour shortages through “reskilling” the workforce. “The goal must be to make the sector more attractive,” Pinkus noted, acknowledging the tough working conditions in the sector.

But increasing the supply of long term care is a gender-equality issue as well, the report argues.

According to estimates, up to 80 percent of long term care is informal, which is predominantly done by women. “Relying on such an important share of informal care puts women at a disadvantage,” said Pinkus, pointing at the impact on female participation of the labour force.

As childlessness among the elderly increases, and children move further away from their parents, informal care networks are likely to prove insufficient in any case, the report says, recommending that apart from investing in preventative healthcare measures, long term care networks simply need to be prepared to face higher demand.

Nonetheless, Pinkus emphasised that in the end, Europe’s demographic change should not be regarded as a bad thing. “This is the result of increased longevity among the elderly. This is fundamentally positive.”

To download the report, visit: https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/beyond-retirement-closer-look-very-old

Seven ways Gaza conflict gets misreported in Europe

Seven ways Gaza conflict gets misreported in Europe

By Arthur Neslen, Euobseprver, 19 January 2024

BRUSSELS - Information has become a crucial front in Israel's Gaza war, with routine military censorship, the mass killing of Gazan journalists and comms strategies to support attacks on hospitals.

Israel has posted contrived tapes of "Hamas operatives" saying that Islamic Jihad bombed one hospital, and hallucinatory graphics of non-existent Hamas headquarters under another.

Its foreign ministry had to delete one inadvertently comic video of a "Palestinian nurse" claiming Hamas was stealing hospital supplies, after widespread online derision.

The Israeli army says it employs more than 200 people in its international communications office. Whatever security goals it meets, the office is also manipulating international opinion.

New research by the Glasgow University Media Group shows that in a four-week period of the war, BBC TV journalists used the terms "murder", "murderous", "mass murder", "brutal murder" and "merciless murder" 52 times to refer to Israelis deaths, but not once for Palestinian deaths. Similar bias existed in the use of "massacre," "slaughter" and "atrocity."

Another study found that Palestinians received one mention for every two Palestinian deaths, while Israelis got eight mentions for every single Israeli death, a 16-1 disparity.

Here are seven other ways that the European media, plus that in the US, misrepresents the war in Gaza.

1. The war did not start on 7 October

Israel has besieged Gaza since Hamas won an election in 2007. Palestinians couldn't leave; business couldn't enter. Even before the war, 80 percent of Gazans needed humanitarian aid and one half were unemployed. Moreover, since its 2022 election, the Netanyahu government — Israel's most far-right ever — has moved to dismantle judicial oversight, establish a private militia, annex the West Bank, and divide Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque. It forcibly transferred at least four communities and killed at least 248 Palestinians. Meanwhile, settler killings doubled and Hamas was eclipsed by new resistance groups in the West Bank. The world's response was deafening silence.

2. Israel is not simply "fighting in self-defence"

This is mainly because Israel has no legal right of self-defence in the occupied territories, according to an International Court of Justice ruling (page62). Many Palestinians see Gaza's destruction on a continuum stretching back over 56 years of military occupation to the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba, many to Gaza. This is why "cycle of violence" narratives that frame the conflict in terms of Palestinian attacks and Israeli retaliation are partial. Under international law, occupied peoples have a right to resistance. Actions targeting civilians are unlawful, and so is the occupation.

3. Israel has no more legitimacy than Palestinians

But Israel's war aims of destroying Hamas, freeing hostages and taking control of Gaza are known. Less publicised is the agenda of Gaza's 11 resistance groups — including Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade — ending the blockade, and the occupation, and releasing Israel's 5,000+ Palestinian "hostages". If Gaza's death toll must be undermined by attributing it to the "Hamas-run health ministry," Israeli casualty figures should be sourced to the "far-right Netanyahu administration." The "settler-run Israeli national security ministry" should also be name-checked when, for example, it hands out weapons to settlers.

4. Actions speak louder than words

Israel's claims to be minimising civilian deaths often lead stories, even as its' army bombs hospitals, mosques and schools. Facts on the ground should take precedence over spin. The liberal broadsheet fondness for over-briefed US demands to de-escalate and "calm tensions" typically ignores Washington's concurrent huge war subsidies, military intervention, and diplomatic shielding that enable the conflict. Headlines such as "Israel expresses regret for 'unintended harm' to civilians in Gaza airstrike" or "Israel says it is scaling down Gaza war" reflect military communications strategies more than news.

5. Biased tones, jaundiced assumptions

Unlike Israelis, Palestinians can be patronised, insulted, shouted down and slandered by news anchors without consequence, as in UK broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer's car crash interview with the renowned Palestinian statesman Mustafa Barghouti on Talk TV. Widening the picture, if it is "terrorism" to kill Israeli civilians at a rave attended by soldiers, why is it not terrorism to bomb an apartment building in which Palestinian fighters live? Such double-standards are long-standing and under-remarked. Like Sky news, the BBC missed South Africa's presentation of the case for genocide in The Hague last week but live-streamed Israel's defence. Its headlines routinely equalise the size of small pro-Israel protests with huge pro-Palestinian ones. The unconscious bias was exemplified by this Daily Mail story: "Lionesses of the Desert: Inside Israel's all-female tank unit taking on Hamas terrorists," about a Jewish Briton who went to fight in Gaza. A Palestinian-Brit who went to fight for Hamas would have received very different editorial treatment.

6. Love for the lurid

Uncorroborated — and later debunked — press horror stories claimed that Hamas slaughtered 40 babies on 7/10, beheading many. This concoction was repeated by US president Joe Biden and Israeli officials and used to build consensus for the ensuing carnage. Claims by the Daily Mail and The Sun that Hamas "roasted babies alive in ovens" hardly qualify as journalism. One baby, Mila Cohen, was indeed shot dead through a door on 7/10. More than 10,000 Palestinian children have died since, to much less tabloid fanfare.

7. Passive voice in headers

Journalists often adopt the passive voice to avoid attributing acts to Israel. One Sky News journalist reported how: "accidentally, a stray bullet found its way into the van ahead and killed a three-or-four-year old young lady," rather than say that an Israeli soldier had killed a child. Another Washington Post headline read: "Four fragile lives found ended in evacuated Gaza hospital," fogging who "the endee" was, and how the "ending" happened. 'Witnesses blame Israeli troops for deaths of four babies' would have been more accurate.

Journalists covering Gaza from afar face limited access, contested facts, lobby pressure and a power imbalance. But when they let these distort their coverage, it ceases to reflect reality and start to shape it, in unintended ways.

"From many a mangled truth a war is won," as the poet Clifford Dyment put it. "And when no truth is pure, who of us can be sure, of lie and truth and war, when the war is won?"

Author

Arthur Neslen is the author of two critically-acclaimed books about Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian identities: Occupied Minds - A Journey Through The Israeli Psyche and In Your Eyes A Sandstorm - Ways of Being Palestinian. From 2004 to 2009 he was based in Ramallah and Tel Aviv, where he wrote about the Israel-Palestine conflict for the websites of Al Jazeera, the Guardian, the Economist, Haaretz and Jane's Information Group. He is now based in Brussels, writing about the environment for The Guardian and others.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author's and not those of EUobserver or CEMAS Board.

German rebuff of Gaza 'genocide' case also has roots in Namibia

By Farid Hafez, 18 January 2024

Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA - The world has now witnessed more than 100 days of war in Gaza following the attacks on 7 October. While 132 hostages remain in the hands of the Palestinian militants, Gaza counts nearly two million displaced, thousands of destroyed homes, and nearly 24,000 dead at the hands of the Israeli army.

But for Germany's political leadership, it is the plight of the Israelis, not the Palestinians that is worth mentioning.

The same German politicians find no words of criticism against the countless publicly-uttered words of genocidal intent, as recently presented by South Africa in its complaint against Israel at the International Court of Justice. (ICJ)

Germany's latest move to outrightly reject the case brought by South Africa to the ICJ, as done by vice-chancellor Robert Habeck as well as foreign minister Annalena Baerbock (both from The Greens), speaks to the country's 'Staatsräson' [reason of state] of unrestricted support of Israel, no matter what.

The official position claims Germany has a unique relationship with Israel based on its responsibility for the Holocaust in World War II.

But one has to question these days what this upholding responsibility is actually worth. As many historians of colonialism and genocide have been arguing for decades, the Nazi regime's genocide against Jews and others was not the first occurrence of a large-scale systematic annihilation of enemies of the Germans.

The genocide against the Herero and Nama in today's Namibia at the hands of the colonial German Kaiserreich is a preceding event with structural as well as personal continuities and can be seen as a playbook for the Holocaust.

But while scholars and minorities are discussing this in great detail, the country's political leadership has only reluctantly and lately come to acknowledge and recognise the guilt on behalf of the German state leaving aside reparations payments.

Questions of reparations are as much feared by the heirs of the German colonial state as are a deeper reckoning with the legacy of racism rooted in German colonialism.

When South Africa brought its charges of genocide against the state of Israel, this coincided with the 120th day of the beginning of the genocide against the Herero and Nama.

And while German politicians immediately intervened in South Africa's complaint with a statement claiming that the complaint had "no basis whatsoever" and intending to make legal arguments on behalf of Israel, Germany has been caught up in its past.

It was none other than the Namibian presidency that harshly criticised Germany: "Namibia rejects Germany's support of the genocidal intent of the racist Israeli state against innocent civilians in Gaza."

President Hage G. Geingob not only reminded the German government that it "is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil," he also argued that "Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza." These words weigh heavily.

Not only has the current German government, which is made up of a chancellor of the Social Democratic Party and a Green foreign minister, proclaimed it is implementing a humane foreign policy, under the banner of a "feminist foreign policy," it also announced a "partnership at eye level" with African countries during the Africa Summit in Berlin.

In other words: Germany has a lot to lose.

While Germany's government is already losing ground on a domestic level — 61 percent of respondents in the latest poll don't support Israel's war in Gaza following the 7 October attack, while only 25 percent do so — its global esteem seems to derogate even more.

Germany has already been internationally isolated, together with a few other European countries, due to its vote in the United Nations' General Assembly regarding the urgent need for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The latest intervention in the UN's International Court of Justice will only further the gap between Germany and Africa.

Author

Farid Hafez is distinguished visiting professor of international studies at Williams College, Massachusetts, and senior researcher at Georgetown University's The Bridge Initiative.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author's and not those of EUobserver or CEMAS Board.