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Who would want to be a policy maker in Europe when there’s a crisis on the horizon? Demographers and economists foresee that thirty million Europeans of working age will ‘disappear’ by 2050. At the same time, retirement will be lasting decades as the number of people in their 80s and 90s increases dramatically. Policy makers must work out how to deal with the triple whammy of increasing demand on the welfare state and healthcare systems, with a decline in tax contributions from an ever-smaller workforce, while the politicians they serve are more focused on the next election than on the next generation. So policy makers have cause to be gloomy. In order to plan ahead, they have to consider all possible scenarios for the future, and accept that the most optimistic of those scenarios probably isn’t going to happen. On top of that, they have to promote forward-thinking policies that may not sit well with the politicians and electorate of today. Given this, we should sincerely congratulate the policy makers in the European Commission, and their political masters in the Member States and Parliament, for formulating and commissioning the report on “The demographic future of Europe—from challenge to opportunity” (European Commission 2006). But let’s not sit back and relax as if, now we all think we understand the problem, the solutions will surely follow. The report is simply a good start. In this piece we make three points. The first is that the move from ‘challenge to opportunity’ will need a multifaceted approach which is likely to require exceptional levels of joined-up thinking at both the European and Member State level. Given past and recent history we worry about the capacity to deliver. Second, the report articulates a semantic somersault in calling for a set of pronatalist policies, but terming them ‘demographic renewal’. Our concern goes beyond the niceties of drafting and has to do with the ambiguity of demographic renewal and its inherent intractability. Finally, and with deliberate intent to provoke, we speculate whether the solution—or part of the solution—might be

Does the Commission’s report adequately address the key issues of the demographic future of Europe?