Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Growing old—and what it means for the future of Europe

Milan Brglez, Jarosław Duda, José Gusmão and 4 more 4th November 2021

Ageing can and should be a positive process, which the Conference on the Future of Europe should embrace.

ageing,ageism,Conference on the Future of Europe
Air Images / shutterstock.com

Everyone wishes to live a fulfilled life. As the the World Health Organization puts it, the challenge is no longer to add years to life but ‘add life to years’.

We, members of the European Parliament, believe the Conference on the Future of Europe can be the turning point where we reinvent what it means to age and grow old in the European Union—so we are no longer scared of it.

As the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, recognised at its launch in May, ‘this conference is a real opportunity to bring Europeans together and to rally around a common ambition for our future, just as previous generations did’.

Generations have a lot in common. A 2017 survey showed that Europeans of different ages agree to a remarkable extent on priorities for policy-makers. More than half of the 10,000 respondents foregrounded addressing poverty and unemployment, as well as securing pensions and social care.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

But each generation is also incredibly diverse. Engaging with Europeans solely on the fashionable ground of the year in which they were born blinds us to the disparate realities faced by individuals due to where they live, their income, their health or minority status and so on. These shape our needs, hopes and expectations, as well as the ways we grow older.

Only democracy and citizens’ participation can help us grasp this diversity and see emerge the common ambition for our future which the commission president urged. Beyond the temporary citizens’ panels set in place for the conference, this implies that all EU decision-making processes should genuinely involve people of all ages as partners. Only in such a way will the enormous resources available under the NextGenerationEU recovery package make a positive difference for everyone.

Ageing and ageism

Regrettably, some inputs to the conference have revealed the persistence of an anti-ageing culture. Are we scared of growing old in Europe? And, if yes, why so?

Denying ageing fuels ageism—the unfair treatment of people on the basis of their age. In some cases, ageism may lead to violence and abuse against older people, a phenomenon which remains to a great extent hidden.

Anti-ageing discourses reflect a fear of dying. But ageing is not dying; ageing means living. We all age from the day we are born. Ageing is a cause for celebration—even more so with today’s longer and healthier life expectancies and increased opportunities for everyone to live to their full potential.

All human beings have equal intrinsic worth. We all have experiences and ideas which can benefit our communities. We all want to have our voices heard when we become older.

As shown by the recent United Nations report on ageism, embracing ageing, supporting people across their lifecourse and promoting age equality strengthen our health and wellbeing and our economies. Multigenerational workplaces benefit employers and workers alike. Investing in care is good for older people who need assistance, as well as for their caregivers and their families. Ageing is part of our shared humanity and we all have a stake in it.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Unprecedented opportunity

As the EU recovers from the pandemic, the conference is an unprecedented opportunity to sketch a new horizon, grounded in our shared desire to live full lives.

While Europe is likely to catch up on the life-expectancy drop occasioned by Covid-19, only concrete changes to what it means to be old in Europe will make our future desirable:

  • We must implement the European Pillar of Social Rights. Member states have the competences to prevent and redress social inequalities affecting our daily lives. Inequalities are critical determinants of how we grow old. Tackling them across our lifespan is not only a matter of principle—it’s an investment for the future.
  • We must draw lessons from the dramatic impact of the pandemic on people living in care institutions. We should rethink care and support services, the better to protect our health and to respect our dignity and ability to remain part of our communities.
  • We must ask the commission to elaborate an Age Equality Strategy, providing policy options to achieve equal participation in society for all age groups, promote equal access to employment, enforce the right to adequate income and foster access to health and care—concerns of older and younger people alike.
  • We must lead the global fight against ageism and rally in favour of a new UN convention to protect our rights as equals when we are older.

As MEPs we commit to supporting all efforts towards making Europe the continent where it feels good to grow old.

ageing,ageism,Conference on the Future of Europe
Milan Brglez

Milan Brglez is a Socialists & Democrats member of the European Parliament. He has a PhD in international relations from the University of Ljubljana.

Jaroslaw Duda
Jarosław Duda

Jarosław Duda is a European People’s Party member of the European Parliament. He graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Lublin.

José Gusmão
José Gusmão

José Gusmão is a Left member of the European Parliament. He graduated in economics from the Institute of Economics and Management in Lisbon.

Marina Kaljurand 1
Marina Kaljurand

Marina Kaljurand is a Socialists & Democrats member of the European Parliament. She has a master's international law and diplomacy from Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Miriam Lexmann 1
Miriam Lexmann

Miriam Lexmann is a European People’s Party member of the European Parliament. She has a master's from the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava.

Marisa Matias
Marisa Matias

Marisa Matias is a Left member of the European Parliament. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Coimbra.

Sirpa Pietikäinen
Sirpa Pietikäinen

Sirpa Pietikäinen is a European People’s Party member of the European Parliament. She has a master's  in economics from the Helsinki School of Economics.

You are here: Home / Society / Growing old—and what it means for the future of Europe

Most Popular Posts

European civil war,iron curtain,NATO,Ukraine,Gorbachev The new European civil warGuido Montani
Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse

Most Recent Posts

EU social agenda,social investment,social protection EU social agenda beyond 2024—no time to wasteFrank Vandenbroucke
pension reform,Germany,Lindner Pension reform in Germany—a market solution?Fabian Mushövel and Nicholas Barr
European civil war,iron curtain,NATO,Ukraine,Gorbachev The new European civil warGuido Montani
artists,cultural workers Europe’s stars must shine for artists and creativesIsabelle Van de Gejuchte
transition,deindustrialisation,degradation,environment Europe’s industry and the ecological transitionCharlotte Bez and Lorenzo Feltrin

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube