ECJ upholds default retirement age – but how long can it last?

In a long-awaited ruling the European Court of Justice has, to all intents and purposes, upheld the legality of the UK’s default retirement age - but don’t believe for a second that the issue itself will slip gracefully into retirement.The court, responding to a case brought by Heyday, the membership arm of charity Age Concern, said the UK was justified in having a default retirement age (DRA) of 65 and this did not breach European law. The ECJ did stress, however, that the government must justify before the High Court that the age limit was directed towards “fulfilling a legitimate aim in employment or social policy”.

While the ECJ’s ruling marks the end of the road for 260 individual cases brought by workers over 65 who said they had been illegally made redundant, there is a wide view that it also marks the beginning of the end for the default retirement age. Mike Emmott, CIPD adviser, employee relations, says: “The days of the default retirement age are numbered.”