Ageing EU Green Paper

The public consultations on EU Parliament Green Paper on Ageing were closed on April 21. Can it speed up a real new era of policy making on ageing and its social impact?

Design for Ageing is one of G-Gravity pivotal themes. As EU recently raise the debate on ageing population with a green paper on demographic changes announced early this year; we will follow up the results of this initiative. 

A green paper is a government document that anyone who is interested can study and make suggestion about before a law or recommendation is issued. The roadmap including feedbacks period and public consultation was closed on April 21.

Even if President von der Leyen identified ageing as one of the three megatrends transforming European society, this demographic trend has never received quite the same attention as the other two great societal challenges of our time – climate change and digitalisation. 

Nevertheless, it defies the social contract that was already under strain due to a shrinking working population and is now suffering even a worst pressure with the effects of Covid19 economic and social tsunami.

The question is if this EU approach could really impact because of EU parliament limited authority in this domain. Social policies are mainly a responsibility of national authorities and often under the execution of regional and local administration. Despite this fragility the time seems promising after Von der Lyen appointed, for the first time, a commissioner for democracy and demography, Vice President Dubravka Šuica.

As G-Gravity we embrace the view of the Active Aging Alliance, a funding programme that aims to create better quality of life for older people and to strengthen industrial opportunities in the field of healthy ageing technology and innovation. Their focus is “support an inclusive health & care approach, the stimulation and upscaling of innovation in active & healthy ageing through health & care eco-systems and the accessibility of digital solutions”. 

AAL issued its 2021 call, officially launched on 15th December 2020, with a committed budget (EC plus participating countries) of 21.408.900 € inspired by this vision. 

Let’s see if EU Green paper will enable this positive approach. Stay tuned!