Comparative Elder Law: Analyzing European Court of Justice Cases on Elder Rights
Professor Israel Doron, thoughtful and prolific researcher from the University of Haifa, has an interesting new article analyzing 16 years of data from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on cases considering “elder rights.”
The May 2013 article, “Older Europeans and the European Court of Justice,” is published in the British Geriatrics Society’s international journal, Age and Ageing.
While the total number of cases discovered (123) is fairly low, the outcomes largely favor the older adult, thus suggesting the potential importance of judicial remedies. The cases studied predate the 2010 adoption of Article 25 of the UN Charter on Human Rights that recognizes core rights for older persons and others.
An example of the cases is provided by Professor Doron: “A man born in June 1935 was employed by the English Post Office until he retired. In 1998, aged 62, he was in receipt of a pension. However, he was denied a ‘winter fuel payment’, a payment that under State Regulations would have been paid to him if he was a woman.” The ECJ concluded the discriminatory treatment could not be justified as necessary to financial equilibrium of the social security system or to insure consistency in the benefit plans at issue.