Age platform says EU legislation for older people 'not enough'

The EU needs to do more than just legislate in order to tackle the continent's ageing workforce, the president of Europe's older people's platform has said.

Elizabeth Mestheneos, president of AGE, said that more needs to done to support the education and training of older people to enable them to continue working for longer.

"Legislation is certainly not enough. We have to move beyond that,” she told a conference on Europe's ageing workingforce.

"I cannot underline enough the importance of education and training. When you look at the data, you will see the shocking lack of money given to the education and training of older people. This is something that really needs remedying," she added.

The conference was organised by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and looked at the ageing workforce, attitudes towards older workers and factors that affect the ability to work longer.

Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, director of the centre on ageing and work at Boston College in the US, supported Mestheneos's concerns about implementing effective anti-discrimination policies.

"There is often a gap between policy adoption and its actual implementation," she said.

But Belinda Pyke, director-general for employment and equal opporunities, defended European policies towards anti-discrimination legislation protecting older people.

Pyke said that EU legislation was there to prevent certain discrimination, rather than promote certain types of behaviour.

"The purpose of legislation is to make it clear that discrimination is prohibited,” she said.

"We shouldn't criticse legislation for not doing something it wasn't intended to do."

Pyke conceded, however, that more needed to be done to raise awareness about age discrimination.

"One of the things about legislation is that it's one thing to have it, but you need to make people aware that they have protection from discrimination," she said.

However, Mestheneos remained convinced that more needs to be done in this area. "I'm worried that we're not investing in our older workforce," she said.

"Employers have learned to say the right thing. It doesn't mean they're doing it."

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