Age-friendly environments: key to address Europe’s demographic change
In the Social Investment Package, the European Commission addresses future challenges and needs regarding social investment, sustainable welfare states and the ability to strengthen Europe’s competiveness in a global setting. However, social investment should primarily benefit the society; accordingly, a collective benefit for the society must be ensured.
Against the background of the demographic change it is crucial to invest as efficiently as possible, keeping in mind that social investment is needed through the whole live cycle.
Future projections foresee a growing number of older people and one of three possible scenarios expect an increasing demand of care, especially long-term care which might be difficult to supply.
Age-friendly environments (AFE) are considered as a key component to support longer healthy life years and consequently the ability to longer live independently. By shaping environments in a way that everybody can access and participate in whatever activity, people will be able to longer contribute to their community and to the labour market. At the same time their wellbeing will increase.
Therefore, AGE is aiming to promote age-friendly environments on European level, as the most sustainable and inclusive way to turn the demographic challenge into an economic and social opportunity that will benefit the whole society.
The following text will provide an overview of the development and implementation of AGE’s Campaign “Towards an AGE-Friendly EU by 2020”. An overview about the different documents influencing the processes is shown below.
