Tania Zgajewski has fallen below replacement levels so that natural population growth has now turned negative. This constitutes a real challenge for our social protection systems, more specifically for the pension and healthcare systems. Indeed, an increasing proportion of elderly people implies permanent increases in pension and health expenditure. There are discrepancies. In France, for example, the trend is more limited. But in other countries, the population is purely and simply decreasing very quickly, because migration strongly accentuates the tendency. Thus, in 2004, the French population increased by 6/1000, but Hungary decreased by nearly 2/1000, Estonia by 3/1000, and Lithuania by 6/1000(Eurostat, 2005). In synthesis, there is more or less no population growth in Europe, and 80% of any growth is based on immigration. This is absolutely essential when one compares the various growth percentages in the world. Old productions Second, new competitors, strong and quickly growing, such as China and India, have appeared. These emerging economic powers have more and more influence. In a few years, China could become the second biggest economy in the world. In many sectors, it has already become the first exporter. The EU textile and clothing sector(especially clothing) has become a symbol of this evolution. For clothing, between 2001 and 2004 in the EU, imports increased by 9% on a yearly basis, and exports decreased by 5.4%. During the same period, the share of China in EU textile imports increased by 43.6%, and in EU clothing imports by 37.6%. Finally, in one single year, between 2003 and 2004, the amount of jobs in the EU textile and clothing sector decreased by 7.4%. EU enterprises(and more particularly those of the old member states) are thus obliged to adjust. They need to develop new products and cut their costs otherwise they risk running out of business. This is particularly true in sectors that are dominated by price competition. Long-term unemployment Unemployment remains too high- and too long- in many places especially for low qualified people. In the European Union,“in 2004 the inactive population of working age(15-64) in the EU-25, i.e. those that are neither working nor actively seeking and immediately available for work, amounted to some 92 million people, corresponding to an average inactivity rate(the residual of the activity rate) of 30.3%”(ECC, 2005). This is very far from glorious. 60