page_title: European Union statistics
section_title: Area and population
hierarchical_section_title: European Union statistics / Area and population
caption_attribution_description: English: A preliminary population cartogram of the EU-27 made with ScapeToad 1.1 using a cut-down and reprojected public domain world shapefile (projection: Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area) and January 2008 population data from Eurostat. This version includes Dutch barrier islands.
context_page_description: Statistics in the European Union are collected by Eurostat.
context_section_description: As of 1 January 2006, the population of the EU was about 493 million people, although in 2020 the EU lost over 10% of its population as a result of the UK leaving the bloc. Many countries are expected to experience a decline in population over the coming decades, though this could be offset with new countries planning to join the EU within the next 20 years. The most populous member state is Germany, with an estimated 80.4 million people. France and Ireland have the highest birth-rates. The most densely populated country is the island of Malta, which is also the smallest, while the largest in area is France. The least densely populated country is Finland.
  Population figures in the table below are from 2006 or 2007 estimates. The highest and lowest figures in each column have been marked in bold.
caption: EU and UK population cartogram
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