World Population Day was established in 1989 by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme, aiming to highlight global population issues.
Back then the total combined population of the current 28 EU member states was 474 million people — 30 years on the population has increased by over 8%, according to the statistical office of the EU, Eurostat.
The population of the EU is now over 513 million, an increase of 1.1 million from 2017,
The population increase comes from net migration, as there were more deaths than births in the bloc in 2018, it added.
This was the second consecutive year when records showed there were more deaths than births.
The EU’s population, however, increased by about the same amount in 2017. Roughly 2.4 million people immigrated to the EU from non-member countries that year.
The countries in 2018 with the highest death rates included Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania, whereas Ireland, Sweden, France, and the UK had the highest birth rates.