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Notes and Insights from EU Migration

2025-08-09
2 min read

My favorite strategy game, Victoria 3, set in the 19th and early 20th centuries features a remarkably detailed simulation of economic, political, and social systems. One of its core mechanics is the "pops" system, which represents groups of people engaging in economic activities such as employment, consumption, and investment.

I noticed from this game that, in the end, the player runs out of pops to employ in their ever expanding industries. The solution? Migration to supply the never ending thirst for labor, at the cost of the sending nation's population decline. In the game, population is power: it is labor, it is demand for your goods, and it is manpower for your wars abroad.

Thus, to receive pops, is to steal power, although with a catch. It is difficult to migrate between countries not in a custom union (something like EU or Mercosul), possibly to simulate the barriers to migration outside of large freedom of movement areas. So I wanted to study exactly how, within these freedom of movement areas, who wins and who doesn't. And the EU served as the perfect example given large intra EU inequalities between Western European and Eastern European states.

Since joining the EU, countries like Romania and Bulgaria have suffered significant declines. My own project, using data from Eurostat, showed Bulgaria had about 60 thousand migrant outflow every year to the EU, which is 600 thousand over a ten year period. Beyond just internal migration, and official statistics, it is estimated 1-3 million Bulgarians live outside the country of a population of 6.5 million people, a substantial loss in working age adults in exchange for remittance payments, which stimulate Bulgaria's economy at the expense of the nation's youth.

Here are some thoughts I am jotting down while working on the project:

  • Germany, France, and the UK as Winners:
    These countries have been the primary destinations for intra-EU migrants, especially from Eastern and Southern Europe. They benefitted from a steady inflow of young, working-age adults, which offset aging populations and labor shortages.

  • Eastern and Southern European "Losers":
    Countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and the Baltic states have experienced significant population declines due to out-migration. (TODO: I also need to add age data to check for gains and losses by age group)