EU Court Says UK Retirement Law Can Be Justified

The law allow companies to dismiss an employee without redundancy payments when the worker reaches the age of 65.

A British law that gives employers the right to force staff to retire can be justified if part of a wider social policy, the European Union's top court said on Thursday.

The British law puts into effect an EU directive and it allows companies to dismiss an employee without redundancy payments when the worker reaches the age of 65 or the mandatory retirement age set by the company.

The European Court of Justice said EU law allowed for such discrimination on the grounds of age if it were part of a wider social policy.

"This kind of difference of treatment on grounds of age is justified if it is a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate social policy objective related to employment policy, the labour market or vocational training," the court said in a statement.

"It is for the national court to ascertain, first, whether the United Kingdom legislation reflects such a legitimate aim and, second, whether the means chosen were appropriate and necessary to achieve it," the court said.

Heyday, the membership organisation of lobby group Age Concern, had complained Britain was not applying the EU law properly. Britain argued its law did not fall within the scope of the EU rules.

Age Concern and another British charity it is merging with, Help the Aged, said the High Court will now have to look very carefully at whether a default retirement age is justified under EU law on the grounds of social policy and not the interests of individual businesses.

"The government continues to consign tens of thousands of willing and able older workers to the scrapheap," Age Concern Director General Gordon Lishman said.

The British government has just scrapped mandatory retirement ages for civil servants but has failed to change the law to benefit all British employees, Lishman said.

Liz Lynne, a British Liberal member of the European Parliament who helped draft the 2000 EU law, said the ruling was a bitter blow for older people.

"It is the UK government which must now act and put an end to the unfair and discriminatory practice of mandatory retirement ages," Lynne said.

"We must continue to work to end the sudden cliff edge of retirement that forces people to stop working at a certain age whether they want to or not, whilst ensuring that individuals still remain entitled to a state pension at an agreed statutory age," Lynne said.