For the fifth year in a row, emigration from the Netherlands exceeded immigration last year, reaching 123,000 emigrants, which amounts to 7.5 emigrants per 1000 inhabitants. Dutch media has repeatedly reported this phenomenon because it caught demographic forecasters by surprise. The last emigration wave occurred fifty years ago, and at present the Netherlands is the only Western European country experiencing net emigration, although similar trends are visible in the UK (Salt and Rees, 2006) and to lesser extent in Germany.
According to Baron Bodissey, a comparable outflow in the US would be 2.3 million people leaving the country. Most of these emigrants are moving to other places in Europe so some might argue that this not really a problem for Europe as a whole. But this attitude overlooks the real problem.
There seems a growing trend in Europe of the professional classes feeling little attachment to their native soil. Thus, they are more and more willing to uproot and go to where they think they can get a better deal. In the long run this is going to make it even harder to sustain Europe’s social model. It is hard to tax the better off to support the less well off if better off are willing to leave.