Speaking at a conference in Greece, Johansson, who previously served as Sweden's Employment minister, emphasized the need for an orderly and controlled increase in legal migration to achieve this consistent influx.
"Legal migration works very well, but it’s not enough," she said, noting that while legal migration has been successful, it is no longer sufficient to address the demographic shift occurring in the European Union.
According to Johansson, the EU is witnessing a workforce decline of approximately one million people each year. A European Commission document suggests that without migration, the working-age population of the EU could plummet by over 100 million, from 334 million back in 2014 to just 238 million by 2060.
Eurostat, a statistical office of the EU, projects a peak population of 453.3 million in 2026, followed by a gradual decline to 447.9 million by 2050. The decline is expected to accelerate, reaching 419.5 million by 2100, with the labor force retracting at an even faster pace due to an aging population.
Meanwhile, in 2023, migration to the EU reached 3.5 million, including more than 300,000 irregular entries, indicating a substantial increase from previous years.
The commissioner stressed the importance of cracking down on illegal migration, particularly the dangerous routes used by hundreds of thousands of people from Africa and the Middle East. Irregular arrivals peaked at over one million in 2015 before slowly decreasing. But these have been steadily rising once more since the onset of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, reaching more than 260,000 in the past year.
As a response, Johansson called for member states to prevent irregular arrivals and emphasized the need for a "global alliance" to combat smuggling networks. The EU has already committed to sharing the costs of hosting migrants more equitably and has pledged to limit arrivals through smuggling routes.
Hungary stands firm against attracting millions of migrants
Hungary, the lone dissenter against the EU's "Blue Card" initiative for attracting migrant laborers, poses a potential obstacle to the migration plans of the EU.
The Blue Card Directive, revised and agreed upon by members of the European Parliament along with respective national government ministers in mid-2021, seeks to encourage skilled workers from outside the EU to come to the continent and contribute to the European workforce.
This would involve the issuance of the eponymous Blue Cards, which are valid for up to four years and allow holders to bring their family members to live with them in the continent. This has seen success in other EU member states, particularly Germany, which attracted the most Blue Card holders in 2022.
In the same year, Eurostat revealed that Hungary granted only 18 Blue Cards, the third-lowest among member states, following Cyprus with zero and Slovakia with just 14, despite Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban acknowledging the need for 500,000 new workers in the coming years.
Instead, Orban insisted that the problem should be solved internally. "We cannot give foreigners an advantage over Hungarians," he said.
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