PhD student: Ms N. Marocchi

Promotor: Mrs Dr P. Foubert

Duration: 16/9/2011 - 15/6/2017

Abstract:

With the adoption of Directive 2000/78 EC Establishing a General Framework for Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation direct and indirect discrimination in employment and occupation on various grounds, including age, is prohibited. However, age discrimination seems to have a unique position within the legal framework of the European Union and his Member States. In the first place, this research project aims thus at determining the position of age discrimination in EU law throughout a thorough study of the European legislation and the case law of the European Court of Justice. This position depends on the permitted justifications to differentiate and the interaction of age discrimination with other grounds of discrimination. In the second place, this project aims at analyzing the whether or not existing interference between the perception on age discrimination of certain Member States (Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) and the perception on age discrimination of the European Union. Firstly, the visions on and solutions for age discrimination of these different Member States will be analyzed. Secondly, the interference itself will be studied. Moreover, this project aims at analyzing the difference between the system of age discrimination in the USA and age discrimination in the EU and in the Member States in order to open up interesting perspectives on age discrimination. In conclusion, the project includes the bundling of all new insights gathered, with a view to the formulation of a number of suggestions and the setting out of the boundaries of the prohibition of age discrimination, both on the EU and Belgian levels.