Authors: Veronika Bazalová, Lindsey Reynolds, Kremena Lazarova, Imane El Morabet, Gudula Fritz, Anete Ilves, Kostas Bartzeliotis
Discrimination on the ground of age is widespread in European societies and it can affect people at all stages of life, in employment as well as in other spheres. This Equinet Discussion Paper looks at age discrimination from a legal point of view, identifying the trends and themes that have arisen linked to discrimination on the ground of age across Europe.
The objective of our Discussion Paper is to provide the readers with a general legal overview on the topic of age discrimination including the European legal framework (developed by European Union and Council of Europe), international case law and work of national equality bodies. We identified several issues that are common in various jurisdictions across European countries. The document is intended for equality bodies, lawyers, national authorities, NGOs and academia.
At the beginning we introduce the legal framework for protection against age discrimination. We also present the trends and themes which have emerged from the national cases described in the equality bodies’ submissions. The opening chapter is followed by the field-specific parts that tackle the issue of age discrimination regarding employment (Chapter 2), provision of goods and services (Chapter 3), housing (Chapter 4) and health and family issues (Chapter 5). An annex to the discussion paper collects all the case law on age discrimination submitted by equality bodies.
This Discussion Paper was prepared by the members of the Equinet Working Group on Equality Law. It is based on cases and analyses submitted by 22 equality bodies.