The fertility rate across the EU's 27 countries stood at 1.38 live births per woman, down from 1.46 in 2022 and well below the "replacement level" of 2.1, at which a population is stable.
"This is the largest annual decline recorded since 1961", the first year for which EU-wide aggregate data is available, the bloc's statistical agency, Eurostat, said of the drop in births.
Births have steadily declined in Europe since the mid-1960s, recording only modest occasional recoveries over the past 20 years, according to the EU statistical agency.
As a consequence, the bloc's population is ageing fast, and some countries face labour shortages at a time where hard-right gains have pushed many governments to crack down on migration.
The mean age at which women have their first child continued to rise, standing at 29.8 years, up from 28.8 in 2013, Eurostat said.
Despite registering more deaths than births, the EU's total population increased by 1.6 million to 449.2 million people in 2023, as a result of migration.
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