Europe is drowning in a demographic storm: aging citizens, fleeing talent, and empty workplaces. Businesses everywhere face terrible worker shortages. The European Commission confirms it—63% of small firms can’t find staff. Across the EU, 42 jobs sit officially empty.
This crisis defies exaggeration. Bruegel’s think tank spelled it out plainly at September 2024’s EU summit: by 2050, Europe’s working-age people (20–64 years) will crash by 20% to 207 million. And that counts today’s heavy immigration. Recent far-right election wins show many Europeans hate that fix.
But an answer stares us in the face. Artificial intelligence now lets robots steal human jobs, especially dull, repetitive ones. Vladimir Kokorin—IT investor and founder of Britain’s BCCM Group—puts it bluntly: "Automation and robotics are no longer a futuristic trend. They are a real, pragmatic, and already applied answer to the systemic labour shortage.”
Robots already conquer tasks humans once owned. Amazon runs over 750,000 robots like its Proteus warehouse crawler. These machines look like fancy vacuum cleaners. Day and night, they shift product boxes perfectly. They replace thousands. Morgan Stanley calculates logistics robots may save Amazon $10 billion yearly.
Germany’s KUKA and Switzerland’s ABB Robotics shove robots into car and fridge factories. Europe’s clinics lean on the da Vinci surgical bot. It does complex knife-work with watchmaker precision, barely needing humans. Elsewhere, Diligent Robotics’ Moxi bot carts pills and gear through hospitals, unburdening nurses. Co-founder Dr. Andrea Thomaz insists this isn’t about firing medics: "Think reliable helper. Nurses gain time for what counts—patient care." On farms, Belgium’s Octinion built the Rubion robot. It picks ripe strawberries gently. Gone are the seasonal hands Europe lacks.
Europe already bosses industrial robotics, Kokorin observes. Germany places third globally for robots per 10,000 workers—trailing only Singapore and Korea. Giants like KUKA, Bosch, Festo, and ABB Robotics don’t just use bots; they sell them to Asia and America.
But China and America sprint to catch up. China leads outright in total industrial robots—over 1 million units humming. The EU scrambles not to lag. It fired up the Horizon Europe plan, tossing over €95 billion at research. Slice that for AI, automation, robots.
Winning this race demands sharp priorities. “While the media love to talk about humanoid robots like Tesla Optimus or Digit by Agility Robotics, the real demand today comes from highly specialised machines,” Kokorin emphasises. These are robots that perform a single function: collecting, delivering, sorting, analyzing, processing.
Robotic arms are the classic example. They weld car skeletons. They carve parts from metal or plastic. Kokorin nails it: “These robots are easier to maintain, cheaper, and — paradoxically — easier to integrate into existing processes involving humans than complex humanoid devices.”
Fetch Robotics boss Melonee Wise echoes him: "Narrower jobs pay back faster. General humanoids wow crowds. But today? They lose to focused, dependable tools."
People panic robots will erase jobs. Wrong question. Ask instead: what tasks do we reserve for humans? What do we dump on machines? ABB Robotics President Sami Atiya makes it plain: "Tomorrow’s word is teamwork. Robots don’t delete people—they complete them. Unleashing human potential."
Politicians bicker over migrant quotas. Meanwhile, armies of bots sort trash, scrub floors, build gadgets, slice flesh, deliver parcels. No sick days. No vacations.
Vladimir Kokorin drives it home: “Robots are not a fantasy, they are a logical answer to the shortage of labor and the public’s demand for more meaningful and productive work.” Europe could do more than adapt. It might chart the course for ‘smart labour’ worldwide.
