Vice-President Suica delivers a keynote speech at Forum on “Preparing a Longevity Society”, organized by Tony Blair Institute for Global change (TBI) in cooperation with the Ellison Institute for Technology-Oxford, the EPC and CHES
Thank you Elisabeth for your introduction!
Dear Professor Piot, dear colleagues – let me start by thanking you and the Tony Blair Institute for the invitation to join your event today!
The very title of it – demographic change and healthy longevity – is like the summary of my demography portfolio! Of what this portfolio has been until now – but also of what it will be over the next 5 years!
Because you will know that I will indeed keep demography in the next mandate – alongside my new mission of commissioner-designate for the Mediterranean.
You know very well that this has been the first time that we had the demography portfolio in the Commission. And I must admit that it often felt like a pioneering job!
Finding the legal basis to act, finding the EU competence to act on demography – knowing that Member States have different challenges. But also finding the right experts, the right colleagues, the right Council configurations or finding the right interlocutors for demography!
It has been a challenge! But an exciting one and a rewarding one!
Because demography is now infusing all EU policies and all priorities. It is also present in all Reports.
The Letta Report put a huge focus on demography and on brain drain, and introduces this new concept of the “right to remain”. If left unmanaged – brain drain can genuinely undermine our internal market – so we need to address this phenomenon very seriously!
The Draghi report, as well, starts – on its very first page – with the challenge of our shrinking workforce!
Demography now matters! And it has become a must today to take demographic change into account when designing our policies and devising our solutions!
So when President von der Leyen decided to appoint me for the post of Vice-President for Demography, back in 2019 it was actually very visionary!
Her decision was already guided by this evidence that the demographic change is becoming a very profound driver of change in Europe – impacting virtually all policy areas at EU level.
During this mandate, over the past 5 years, we have delivered a number of outputs on demographic change! Like the Green Paper on Ageing, the Harnessing Talent communication, the Care strategy, the long-term vision for rural areas, the Atlas of demography and many others.
We also tried to build a genuine body of scientific evidence on demography with a number of science for policy papers – necessary to underpin the decision making with data and statistics!
And as a crown at the end, we presented our Demography Toolbox Communication last year in October, in response to the call from the European Council.
This call from the leaders helped us to really anchor demography in competitiveness! By making sure that we keep our competitive edge regardless or despite the demographic change we’re experiencing. And by designing tools to help Member States respond to their own specific demographic challenges.
Because demographic change is indeed a challenge! It impacts our competitiveness, our innovation ability. It generates labour and skills shortages and it impacts the financing of our social protection systems and public budgets.
And this is exactly why we should not leave it unaddressed!
If we anticipate the impact, if we design good solutions, demographic change can also generate tremendous opportunities!
And here I come to longevity! A concept that we started introducing with the presentation of our Demography toolbox!
And in interaction with Professor Piot, it evolved from longevity into healthy longevity!
What we tried to do with the Toolbox was to focus on the design of solutions for the horizontal demographic challenges that all Member States face!
Because as you know, every Member state has a different demographic challenge. According to the demography mapping that we produced in preparation of our toolbox – we could identify particular country challenges.
In Croatia for example, the focus is on brain drain, in Spain on rural depopulation, in the Netherlands, the focus is on housing!
But the 2 horizontal challenges that all our Member states experience – without exception – are ageing and shrinking workforce!
And longevity – as long as it is healthy – is part of the solution for both!
It is part of the solution for ageing because longevity makes that ageing should not just be seen as a burden! The fact that we live longer is fantastic news. But for that to be an opportunity we need to capitalize on the longevity dividend, foster healthy ageing and make sure that longer lives rhyme with healthy longevity, and not with long term care!
And for the problem of shrinking workforce, by turning ageing into longevity we actually make sure to activate the entirety of our human capital and to make the best use of the additional years we get to live!
This demographic change is also to be seen in the global context – as highlighted in the Draghi report – because our problem of shrinking and ageing is also likely to decrease the relative weight of the Single Market and to affect our competitiveness and our geo-economic role.
With the different initiatives that we presented under this mandate, and with the fact that demography is now virtually present everywhere, we managed to bring the topic to the political agenda. It has become unavoidable because it impacts all our policies!
And I cannot hide my satisfaction seeing that! Because it has been a challenge, but it was a successful one.
What was very important for me is that this huge body of work indeed continues in the next mandate!
And that is why I am particularly honoured by the fact that I will have the privilege to continue conducting this demography portfolio also for the next 5 years!
President von der Leyen’s Political Guidelines for 2024-2029 and the mission letters confirm that we will work on tackling the root causes of demographic change and on adapting to new realities. And healthy ageing and longevity are part of our mission for the next 5 years!
Together with other fellow commissioners, I will indeed be focusing on fully activating the entirety of our human capital and increasing the participation in the labour market of women as well as younger and older generations; and on reducing regional disparities so that people can thrive also if they stay in their home regions: so that they are not forced to move out because of the lack of opportunities at home!
Intergenerational fairness will be central to this effort. We must ensure that decisions taken today do not harm to future generations and that there is increased solidarity and engagement between people of different ages.
This is the first time in the history of humanity that we have so many generations living at the same time. Intergenerational fairness is all about making sure that they are not a burden to each other, but that they are mutually enriching!
And this is again where longevity kicks in! Because we need indeed to make sure to alleviate the burden of ageing on our budgets, and we can do it only by capitalizing on the longevity dividend and by working on a new type of literacy: the longevity literacy!
We are now at the end of this commission, but we are also at the beginning of the new one. And we will make sure to keep the demography portfolio dynamic and vibrant so that it genuinely infuses our policies and our decision making.
Longevity, and healthy longevity will be a key component of it.
Thank you again for this opportunity to address you today! I wish you a very successful morning and I am looking forward to many further inspiring exchanges on this passionate topic of healthy longevity and demographic change!
Thank you!
Source – EU Commission