Nearly 448M people live in EU: Statistics authority

Calculated on Jan. 1, the population of the 27 EU member states was estimated at 447.7 million, the bloc's statistical authority said on Friday.

Largely due to a one-off event, the number saw a steep drop of 12.8% compared with 513.5 million in the 28 member states on Jan 1, 2019, Eurostat said ahead of World Population Day on July 11.

"The decrease is mainly due to the withdrawal of the UK (on Feb 1), which led the population of the EU to decrease by 13%," it said.

As more deaths than births were recorded in the EU since 2012, the natural change has been in a negative direction.

In 2019 the bloc saw 4.7 million deaths, 4.2 million births, and 900,000 net migration.

Germany has the largest population with 83.2 million, accounting for 18.6% of the total EU population, followed by France (67.1 million, 15.0%), Italy (60.2 million, 13.5%), Spain (47.3 million, 10.6%), and Poland (38.0 million, 8.5%).

While the Mediterranean island nation of Malta posted the highest population rise, the largest population drop was seen in Bulgaria.