The real problem is a social contract that was sold to people long ago without any secure funding source.

Now those social services (free healthcare, retirement benefits) are baked into entire populations' expectations and life planning. Give it 20-30 years, then these services can neither be provided nor paid for.

Our only real hope is tech progress unlocks much faster economic growth, even with dwindling numbers of people.

Despite tech and AI being pretty much the only lifeline Europe has to get itself out of the pit it dug (population collapse while simultaneously promising the world to retirees), they are still strangling the nascent tech scene.

In 30 years are we going to have a European economy that is entirely dependent on foreign AI and robots to prop up a society of old people?