r/europe • u/MarktpLatz Lower Saxony (Germany) • Feb 21 '17

What do you know about... the UK?

This is the sixth part of our ongoing weekly series about the countries of Europe. You can find an overview here.

Todays country:

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

The UK is the second most populous state in the EU. Famous for once being the worlds leading power, reigning over a large empire, it has recently taken the decision to exit the EU.

So, what do you know about the UK?

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u/karmagovernment United Kingdom Feb 22 '17

France also has a very high net migration

Not to the same extent as the UK

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '17

Thats fair but France's population has had a good 2 mil on the UK the last couple of decades and I havent found a source that states that the UK has overtaken France. The UK has 100k more net migration than France currently if we assume that birth rates are the same (France's is actually higher ) it will take the UK anywhere between 15 to 25 years to actually overtake France.

Sources: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL (also used worldbank for birth rates ) https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/fr.html

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uk.html (CIA had the most recent numbers 2016, even gov.uk had only 2015)

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u/ImagineHavingTits Feb 22 '17

I think some confusion comes because the UK has the higher population in terms of people in Europe, but France considers their overseas regions fully integrated and Includes them in their figures.

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '17

Are we sure the UK doesnt include their overseas territories as well? A quick search shows that the UK have about 250k people overseas while France about 600k. So even if we remove France's overseas territories they would still be more populous than the UK by a million.

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u/ImagineHavingTits Feb 22 '17

I'm pretty sure the UK excludes overseas territory, they are not as integrated as France's and are mostly autonomous.

Metropolitan France, as they call it, has a population of about 64m, and their overseas population is 2.7m.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_France

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '17

Hmm. Yeah if the 2.7m are excluded the UK would comfortably be larger in population. Even if we include UK's 250k (which I double checked) it wouldnt matter. Good thinking I didnt think about the overseas territories. I could now confidently say that UK has a larger mainland population.