Object
With this Autonomous Framework Agreement, the social partners aim to contribute to the EU policies and actions already developed in support of active ageing and an intergenerational approach. The Agreement seeks to increase awareness of the challenges and opportunities arising from demographic change in the workplace and provide practical approaches to managing active ageing.
Key points
The Agreement commits the partners to implementing tools and measures to manage active ageing across national, cross-industry, sectoral and/or enterprise-specific levels. Active ageing refers to optimising opportunities for workers of all ages to work in high quality, productive and healthy conditions until legal retirement age, based on the mutual commitment and motivation of employers and workers.
The Agreement outlines five areas in which actions can be taken:
- strategic assessments of workforce demographics;
- health and safety at the workplace;
- skills and competence management;
- work organisation for healthy and productive working lives;
- an inter-generational approach (building on the strengths of all generations and fostering cooperation between them at the workplace).
With regard to health and safety at work, the Agreement suggests tools and measures to prevent or reduce potential physical and mental demands on workers, such as adapting work processes and workplaces, reallocating tasks and health promotion.
Implementation
In 2021, the EU social partners published an implementation report on the Agreement, detailing the national, cross-industry, sectoral and enterprise-specific level actions they had been taking across Europe. The implementation has been impacted by COVID-19 but, at the same time, the measures proposed in the Agreement have been found useful to counter the risk of job losses due to the pandemic.
Publication details
Published by: EU cross-sectoral social partners: BusinessEurope, UEAPME, CEEP and ETUC
Publication date: March 2017
Number of pages: 12 pp.
English