Europe

Europe Has Too Few Workers and Too Many Retirees. Cutting Immigration Will Make the Math Worse.

Europe’s resistance to immigration is a path to budgetary disaster.

Reem Ibrahim | 4.30.2026 12:00 PM

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French pensioners have it pretty good. The minimum age at which a French worker can obtain their state pension is 62, with many retiring as early as 60. French retirees receive some of the most generous pension payments in all of Europe, now averaging around 1,500 euros a month (about $1,750). The result is that French seniors have higher average incomes than working-age people.

There's just one problem: This is completely unsustainable. The combination of generous pensions and an aging population means France is sitting on a budgetary time bomb, and the public has repeatedly rejected any attempt to defuse it.

In 2023, President Emmanuel Macron pushed ahead with plans to increase the state pension age by a mere two years, to 64. This would still be enormously generous by international standards. Yet mass protests and strikes followed. Protesters in Paris set fire to bins and tires, hurling rocks at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. After rioters briefly blocked the train tracks at Gare de Lyon station, Clément Saild, a passenger, told NPR, "Everybody is getting madder."

Macron's proposal resulted not only in mass protests but in multiple no-confidence votes in Parliament. Former French Prime Minister Michel Barnier's austerity proposals, including a six-month delay to pension increases, resulted in the collapse of his government in 2024, the first of two governments to fall within a year. In 2025, proposals to cut budgets resulted in the resignation of Macron's sixth prime minister, François Bayrou. Later that year, the government suspended the age increase until after the 2027 presidential election.

Political turmoil has dashed hopes of making even a small dent in reducing the country's large and persistent budget deficit, which in 2024 hit 5.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). That's the country's largest deficit since World War II (apart from 2020) and it's well above the eurozone's 3 percent limit. Weary of this risk, investors have increased French borrowing costs to some of the highest levels in the entire eurozone, adding costs to the system.

The core problem is the unfunded pension system. Today's French pensioners came of age in an era when there were fewer old people, and life expectancies were shorter. The country's seniors have paid far less into the system than they now receive, creating a massive budget gap. "The deficit of the pension system is really worrying," says Pierre Garello, professor of economics at Aix-Marseille University. "It's probably worse than is stated now."

The rest of Europe may not be violently rioting, but this same pattern is occurring across the continent. A combination of aging populations, collapsing birth rates, and shrinking labor markets has produced an economic crisis so serious that it threatens the viability of the economic system.

With fertility falling, there's only one way to meet the economy's demographic needs: immigration. Yet the European public is increasingly hostile to young workers from abroad, and politicians are acceding to their demands. This, in turn, is........

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