We All are Europe - AESAEC

Module 1 – The European Union and its Relevance for Senior Citizens
(http://europa.eu/debateeurop). Older citizens preparing a project proposal can gain inspiration by
consulting this website.
The European Parliament
After the last enlargement in 2004, the number of seats in the European Parliament was increased
to 732. Of these 99 are allocated to Germany as the country with the largest population and five to
Malta as the smallest EU country. The MEPs are elected directly by the peoples of Europe. Senior
and other citizens can therefore approach them with their questions and appeals. The Parliament
exercises four functions: legislative, political, supervisory and budgetary.
The Parliament can give approval with regard to the concluding
of international agreements. It participates in the adoption of
Community Acts, and politically it represents more than 450 million
citizens. It monitors the Commission’s activity and is required
to agree to any major budgetary decisions.
The European Parliament also appoints an Ombudsman
(http://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/start.faces) empowered to
receive complaints from European citizens with respect to poor
administration and performance by the Community, and it leads
on the Intergroup on Ageing (www.age-platform.org), whose
activities are very relevant to older citizens.
The Council of Ministers
The Council of Ministers, or simply the Council, is
composed of a ministerial level representative from
each member state who is authorised to commit the
government of that member state. It is composed of
nine configurations which each focus on a number of
related areas. These include general affairs and external
relations, economic and financial affairs, and
health and social matters. Currently the Council’s
Presidency rotates every six months and thus each
member state has the opportunity to prove its efficiency
in promoting common policies.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ)
The Court of Justice (often called European Court of Justice) consists of one judge
per member state sitting in its chambers. The common rules adopted by the decision
making bodies may be interpreted differently from one country to another if
only national courts were to control decision-making. The main task of the Court
of Justice is to clarify ambiguous legal provisions. For example, recently Age Concern,
the largest British older people’s charity (www.ageconcern.org.uk) backed
the Heyday Case challenging the mandatory retirement age. This case has been
referred to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling
Heyday and Age Concern are confident that the new rules breach the requirements of the European
Directive on Employment because they leave people over 65 without the right to choose to continue
working and enable employers to refuse to recruit anyone over the age of 65. More and more employers
are using the new regulations to force out people over 65‚ knowing that they cannot be ac-
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