The EU’s Active Ageing Agenda

Abstract

This chapter will begin by exploring the EU’s ‘active ageing’ discourse and proposed policy approach. As the preceding chapter outlined, active ageing policies can embody more than the governance of retirement to include areas such as leisure, voluntary work, health and wellbeing. For this book however, as the focus is on EU15 nations, it is important to examine the EU-level policy discourse on active ageing. In aiming to address the extent to which EU15 countries have converged towards the EU’s active ageing policy agenda, this book acknowledges that it does not necessarily follow that all nations will adopt the same sets of policies, or that the EU has caused any policy change. This chapter therefore includes arguments to suggest why differences in national approaches may persist, both in terms of the policy mixes they present, and in terms of how these welfare arrangements interact with different groups within the older age cohort. Finally, this chapter will outline the schema which will be used to address EU15 nations’ progress towards the EU’s active ageing approach.