New unit within the European Commission will address ageing and human rights

The establishement of the new unit to deal with non-discrimination and ageing issues at the Directorate General Justice and Consumers rewards AGE long-standing efforts to convince EU leaders of the need to strengthen and coordinate policies on ageing.

The ‘Nondiscrimination: LGBTQ, Age, Horizontal Matters’ unit of the Directorate-General Justice and Consumers was set up in March. It will help improve the coordination of EU initiatives on ageing and better anchor them in human rights.

We look forward to a fruitful collaboration with this new interlocutor in the European Commission which, we hope, will help materialize the EU’s commitment on Union of Equality and advance the rights of older persons at EU and global levels, notably by:

• strengthening the efforts of the European Commissioner on equality, Helana Dali, and of the Vice-President for democracy and demography, Dubravka Šuica, to carry out initiatives to enhance equality in old age,
• increasing EU’s involvement in policy process on ageing at international levels, such as the UN Economic Commission for Europe’s Standing Working Group on Ageing – to implement the Madrid International Plan for Action on Ageing – and the UN Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing (read our May Special Briefing),
• supporting AGE call to adopt an EU strategy on age equality.

Stay tuned for further developments…