Demographics of Europe

According to Volker Heyd, an archaeologist at the University of Helsinki, up to 7 million people lived in Europe in 3000 BC.[4]

Estimates for historical population sizes of Europe (including Central Asia, listed under "former USSR") based on Maddison (2007),[5] in millions, with estimated percentage of world population:

Population pyramid of Europe in 2023 based on the collective United Nations geoscheme for Europe

Europe population pyramid from 1950 to 2023

330,000,000 people lived in Europe in 1916.[8] In 1950 there were 549,000,000.[9] The population of Europe in 2015 was estimated to be 741 million according to the United Nations,[9] which was slightly less than 11% of the world population. The precise figure depends on the exact definition of the geographic extent of Europe. The population of the European Union (EU) was 509 million as of 2015.[10] Non-EU countries situated in Europe in their entirety[11] account for another 90 million. Five transcontinental countries[12] have a total of 247 million people, of which about half reside in Europe proper.

As it stands now, around 10% of the world's people live in Europe. If demographic trends keep their pace, its share may fall to around 7% in 2050, but still amounting to 716 million people in absolute numbers, according to the United Nations estimate.[9] (The decline in the percentage is partly due to high fertility rates in Africa and South America.) The sub-replacement fertility and high life expectancy in most European states mean a declining and aging population. High immigration and emigration levels within and from outside the continent are taking place and quickly changing countries, specifically in Western Europe, from a single ethnic group to a multicultural society. These trends change societies' economies as well as their political and social institutions.

Modern political map

Council of Europe members, with the ten founding states in yellow

Life expectancy in Europe in 2019–2021

According to different definitions, such as consideration of the concept of Central Europe, the following territories and regions may be subject to various other categorisations aside from geographic conventions.

Population and area of European countries/territories

Country (or territory)	Population [1][2]	Area (km2)[14]	Density (per km2)	Capital
Albania *	2,854,710	28,748	99	Tirana
Andorra *	79,034	468	169	Andorra la Vella
Armenia *	2,790,974	29,743	94	Yerevan
Austria *	8,922,082	83,871	106	Vienna
Azerbaijan *	10,312,992	86,600	119	Baku
Belarus *	9,578,167	207,600	46	Minsk
Belgium *	11,611,419	30,528	380	Brussels
Bosnia and Herzegovina *	3,270,943	51,209	64	Sarajevo
Bulgaria *	6,520,314	110,900	59	Sofia
Croatia *	4,060,135	56,594	72	Zagreb
Cyprus *	1,244,188	9,251	134	Nicosia
Czech Republic *	10,510,751	78,866	133	Prague
Denmark *	5,854,240	43,094	136	Copenhagen
Estonia *	1,328,701	45,227	29	Tallinn
Faroe Islands * (Denmark)	49,709	1,399	35.6	Tórshavn
Finland *	5,535,992	336,852	16	Helsinki
France *	64,531,444	551,500	117	Paris
Georgia *	3,757,980	69,700	54	Tbilisi
Germany *	83,408,554	357,137	234	Berlin
Gibraltar * (UK)	32,669	6	5,445	Gibraltar
Greece *	10,445,365	131,957	79	Athens
Guernsey *[d]	65,345	63	1,037	St. Peter Port
Hungary *	9,709,786	93,026	104	Budapest
Iceland *	370,335	103,000	4	Reykjavík
Ireland *	4,986,526	69,825	71	Dublin
Isle of Man *[d]	84,263	572	147	Douglas
Italy *	59,240,329	301,339	197	Rome
Jersey *[d]	97,857	116	844	Saint Helier
Kosovo **[p]	1,859,203	10,887	171	Pristina
Latvia *	1,873,919	64,562	29	Riga
Liechtenstein *	39,039	160	244	Vaduz
Lithuania *	2,786,651	65,300	43	Vilnius
Luxembourg *	639,321	2,586	247	Luxembourg
Malta *	526,748	316	1,667	Valletta
Moldova *	3,061,506	33,846	90	Chişinău
Monaco *	36,686	2	18,343	Monaco
Montenegro *	627,859	13,812	45	Podgorica
Netherlands *	17,501,696	37,354	469	Amsterdam
North Macedonia *	2,103,330	25,713	82	Skopje
Norway *	5,403,021	323,787	17	Oslo
Poland *	38,307,726	311,888	123	Warsaw
Portugal *[f]	10,290,103	92,212	112	Lisbon
Romania *	19,328,560	238,391	81	Bucharest
Russia *	145,102,755	17,098,246	8	Moscow
San Marino *	33,745	61	553	San Marino
Serbia *[g]	7,296,769	88,361	83	Belgrade
Slovakia *	5,447,622	49,036	111	Bratislava
Slovenia *	2,119,410	20,273	105	Ljubljana
Spain *	47,486,935	505,992	94	Madrid
Svalbard and Jan Mayen (Norway)	2,868	62,422	0	Longyearbyen
Sweden *	10,467,097	450,295	23	Stockholm
Switzerland *	8,691,406	41,285	211	Bern
Transnistria *	505,000	4,163	121.3	Tiraspol
Turkey *	84,775,404	783,562	108	Ankara
Ukraine *	43,531,422	603,500	72	Kyiv
United Kingdom *	67,281,039	242,495	277	London
Vatican City *	842	0.4	1,913.6	Vatican City
Åland (Finland)	28,666	1,580	18	Mariehamn

* indicates link goes to article on demographics of the country (or territory), not just the country itself.

Mirroring their mostly sub-replacement fertility and high life expectancy, European countries tend to have older populations overall. They had nine of the top ten highest median ages in national populations in 2005. Only Japan had an older population.[15]

According to Eurostat, the average birth rate in the European Union was 1.5 children per woman in 2020. The EU countries with the highest rates were France (1.83 live births per woman), Romania (1.80) and Czechia (1.71). The lowest rates were found in Malta (1.13), Spain (1.19) and Italy (1.24).[16]

The reasons that Italian citizens give for not having children are economic costs, fear of losing their jobs, and lack of services for families.[17]

Eurostat says that the proportion of children born to foreign mothers, including both from other EU member states and from non-EU countries, has been increasing in the EU since 2013 and stood at 21% in 2020.[16]

Over the last several centuries, religious practice has been on the decline in a process of secularization. Several European countries have experienced a decline in church attendance as well as a decline in the number of people professing a religious belief. The 2010 Eurobarometer survey found that, on average, 51% of the citizens of the European Union that they believe there is a God, 26% believe there is some sort of spirit or life force and 20% don't believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force. 3% declined to answer.[18] The Eurobarometer survey must be taken with caution, however, as there are discrepancies between it and national census results. For example, in the United Kingdom, the 2001 census revealed that over 70% of the population regarded themselves as "Christians" with only 15% professing to have no religion, though the wording of the question has been criticized as "misleading" by the British Humanist Association.[19] The 2011 census showed a dramatic reduction to less than 60% of the population regarding themselves as "Christians".[20]

Despite its decline, Christianity is still the largest religion in Europe. According to a survey published in 2010, 76.2% of Europeans identified themselves as Christians.[21][22] Catholics were the largest Christian group in Europe, accounting for more than 48% of European Christians.[23] The second-largest Christian group in Europe was the Orthodox, who made up 32% of European Christians.[23] And about 19% of European Christians were part of the Protestant tradition. Europe constitutes in absolute terms the world's largest Christian population.[24] According to Scholars, in 2017, Europe's population was 77.8% Christian (up from 74.9% 1970),[25][26] these changes were largely result of the collapse of Communism and switching to Christianity in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries.[25]

According to a 2003 study,[27] 47% of French people declared themselves as agnostics in 2003. This situation is often called "Post-Christian Europe". A decrease in religiousness and church attendance in western Europe (especially in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden) has been noted. According to a survey published in 2012, atheists and agnostics make up about 18.2% of the European population.[28] According to the same survey the religiously unaffiliated make up the majority of the population only in two European countries: Czech Republic (75%) and Estonia (60%).[28]

According to another survey about Religiosity in the European Union from 2012 by Eurobarometer, Christianity was the largest religion in the Union (accounting for 72% of the total population), Catholics were with 48% the largest Christian group in the Union, Protestants made up 12%, Eastern Orthodox made up 8% and other Christians accounted for 4% of the total population.[29] non-believers/agnostics accounted for 16%, atheists accounted for 7% and Muslims accounted for 2%.[30]

Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities. The total number of national minority populations in Europe is estimated at 105 million people, or 14% of 770 million Europeans. (including Europeans in Siberia)[31]

The largest ethnic groups are the Russians, with 117 million, and the Germans, with 72 million. In some countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Spain, the designation of nationality may controversially take on ethnic aspects, subsuming smaller ethnic groups such as Scots, Welsh, Cornish, Northern Irish, Bretons, Catalans, and Basques, making it difficult to quantify a "British" or "French" ethnicity, for example.

Approximately 20 million non-Europeans live in the EU, 4% of the overall population.[32] There are an estimated 10 million Romani people in Europe.[33]

Map of Europe showing the major languages

Most of the languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. This family is divided into a number of branches, including Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Celtic, Armenian and Greek. The Uralic languages, which include Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Udmurt, Mordvin and Sami also have a significant presence in Europe. The Turkic family also has several European members, while the North Caucasian and Kartvelian families which include Georgian, Circassian, Chechen and Abkhaz anong others are important in the southeastern extremity of geographical Europe. The Basque language of the western Pyrenees is an isolate unrelated to any other group, while Maltese is the only Semitic language in Europe with national language status, although Arabic, Hebrew and Assyrian Neo-Aramaic/Syriac are spoken by migrant populations. The Kalmyk language, is an Mongolic language, spoken in Kalmykia, located directly north of the North Caucasus in Eastern Europe. The most spoken language of Europe is Russian, which belongs to the group of Slavic languages.

Languages that are not official state languages are protected in many European countries by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. These can include languages spoken by relatively many people, such as Catalan and Basque in Spain, Frisian in the Netherlands, as well as languages spoken by relatively few such as Cornish Manx and Scottish Gaelic in the United Kingdom, and Romansch in Switzerland.

Bronze Age spread of Yamnaya Steppe pastoralist ancestry. The Yamnaya culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans.

Homo sapiens appeared in Europe roughly 40,000 years ago, with the settlement of the Cro-Magnons, followed by European hunter-gatherers and Early European Farmers (EEF). Over the prehistoric period there was continuous settlement in Europe, notably by the immediate descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans who migrated west after the advent of the Neolithic revolution.[35]

Autosomal DNA

Population genomic PCA map, showing Europeans (CEU) among other sampled Eurasian populations[41]

According to geneticist David Reich, based on ancient human genomes that his laboratory sequenced in 2016, Europeans formed from four West-Eurasian ancestral components in varying degrees: Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG), Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (EHG), Neolithic Levant farmers and Neolithic Iranian farmers respectively.[42]

^ a: Continental regions as per UN categorisations/map. Depending on definitions, various territories cited below may be in one or both of Europe and Asia, or Africa.
^ b: Includes Transnistria, a region that has declared, and de facto achieved, independence; however, it is not recognised de jure by sovereign states.
^ c: Russia is considered a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. However, the population and area figures include the entire state.
^ d: Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Jersey are Crown Dependencies of the United Kingdom. Other Channel Islands in the Bailiwick of Guernsey include Alderney and Sark.
^ e: Cyprus is physiographically entirely in Western Asia, but it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures refer to the entire state, including the de facto independent part Northern Cyprus.
^ f: Figures for Portugal include the Azores and Madeira archipelagos, both in Northern Atlantic.
^ g: Area figure for Serbia includes Kosovo, a province that unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, and whose sovereign status is unclear. Population and density figures are 2010 estimates and are given without the disputed territory of Kosovo.
^ h: Figures for France include metropolitan France but not overseas departments and territories as they are not part of the European continent.
^ j: Kazakhstan is physiographically considered a transcontinental country in Central Asia (UN region) and Eastern Europe, with European territory west of the Ural Mountains and both the Ural and Emba rivers. However, area and population figures refer to the entire country.
^ k: Armenia is physiographically entirely in Western Asia, but it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures include the entire state respectively.
^ m: Georgia is often considered a transcontinental country in Western Asia and Eastern Europe. However, the population and area figures include the entire state. This also includes Georgian estimates for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two regions that have declared and de facto achieved independence. The International recognition, however, is limited.
^ o: The total figures for area and population includes the whole of the transcontinental countries. The precision of these figure is compromised by the ambiguous geographical extend of Europe and the lack of references for European portions of transcontinental countries.
^ p: Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008. Its sovereign status is unclear. Its population is a 2007 estimate.
^ r: Abkhazia and South Ossetia unilaterally declared their independence from Georgia on 25 August 1990 and 28 November 1991 respectively. Their sovereign status is unclear. Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates respectively.

• Eurostat – Population and population change statistics (Note that this only covers present and projected future population.)
• Eurostat – Population projections