Davos: Europe’s welfare states are at risk. Trump could make the problem worse

London

  

Europe’s generous welfare states are coming under increasing strain as weak economic growth collides with rising demands on government budgets, particularly from aging populations.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House Monday only adds to the uncertainty facing one of the world’s most stable and prosperous regions.

The incoming US president is due to address the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum this week. European government and business leaders gathering in the alpine town of Davos in Switzerland will be anxious to learn about Trump’s plans, including for tariffs on imported goods and the war on their doorstep in Ukraine.

The United States is the biggest buyer of European goods and the tariffs Trump promised on the campaign trail are expected to decrease growth in the region. Even the mere threat of higher import levies could do so, because of the resulting drag on business investment as companies tread with caution, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.

It is also uncertain whether Europe can rely on continued US military protection, with Trump threatening in October to abandon NATO allies overwhelmingly European states if they don’t increase spending on defense.

Earlier this month, he called on members of the military alliance to more than double defense spending to 5% of their gross domestic product, from the current guideline of 2% itself a level many European economies do not yet meet.

Allocating less of their budgets to defense has allowed European countries to spend more on government services, including healthcare and unemployment benefits. Since 1991, Europe has saved €1.8 trillion ($1.9 trillion) as a result of lower defense spending a so-called “peace dividend” allowing an expansion in European welfare states “to a degree not backed by the general economic development,” researchers at Germany’s Ifo Institute wrote a year ago.

Even a small increase in spending on defense would likely put pressure on already stretched government finances, which must also cover other growing demands.

“European governments do not only aim for higher defense spending but also have to invest into transforming their struggling economies and fighting climate change,” the Ifo researchers said. “The limited fiscal space confronts them with serious trade-offs.”

Beyond spending on defense, new technologies and the clean energy transition, Europe faces another huge cost: aging populations.

“The burden of aging is a real burden,” said Peter Taylor-Gooby, a research professor of social policy at the University of Kent in England. Government spending on older people is already “the lion’s share of the welfare state” in Europe, he told .

Take Germany. To maintain current pension provision, Europe’s biggest economy needs to grow at least 2% a year, according to the CEO of Deutsche Bank, Christian Sewing. The German economy has, by contrast, contracted for the past two years.

For Europe as a whole, falling birth rates and rising numbers of pensioners as people live longer mean a lower share of workers and more government spending on the elderly. That leaves less to invest in training and technology to enhance productivity and deliver the economic growth and tax revenues required to maintain welfare states.

“In order to continue to pay for pensions and healthcare (for older people), we sacrifice the future, which is investing in education, investing in children, investing in research and development,” said Bruno Palier, research director of the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po in Paris. “This is where the fear should be.”

McKinsey estimates that in western Europe, the expected decline in the share of working-age people in overall populations could slow annual growth in GDP per head by an average of $10,000 over the next quarter-century not a “trifling” drag on improvement in living standards.

To maintain the same growth in living standards seen since the 1990s, McKinsey calculates that productivity, defined as GDP-per-hour-worked, in Europe’s biggest economies would need to rise at between two and four times the pace of the past decade between now and 2050.

As it stands, productivity growth in Europe is actually slowing. That will make it more difficult to maintain social welfare provision, which in many European countries is more generous than in other advanced economies, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

“If we cannot raise productivity, we risk having fewer resources for social spending,” European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said in a speech in November delivered just weeks after Trump won his second term in office.

“Our European way (of social protection) is now under pressure,” she warned. “We need to adapt quickly to a changing geopolitical environment and regain lost ground in competitiveness and innovation. Failure to do so could jeopardize our ability to generate the wealth needed to sustain our economic and social model.”

Olesya Dmitracova contributed reporting.