NGO/Civil Society

The Covenant on Demographic Change is the new EU-wide association gathering all local, regional and national authorities, civil society organisations, universities, and businesses, that commit to cooperate and implement evidence-based solutions to support active and healthy ageing as a comprehensive answer to Europe’s demographic challenge. The Covenant builds on the outcomes of the Thematic Network AFE-INNOVNET.

What does the Covenant aim to achieve?

To engage local and regional authorities in developing environments for active and healthy ageing that:

• empower people to live healthily, actively and independently for longer,
• enhance quality of life and well-being in later age,
• conceive public space, transport, housing and local services with the needs of all generations in mind,
• lower the pressure put on family carers and on public health and long-term care budgets.

The Covenant has been established as an international non-profit association under Belgian law. It is open to all interested parties that voluntarily commit to making age-friendly environments a reality in their communities and to share their experience with other Covenant members.

The Covenant connects and aligns with existing initiatives such as the World Health Organisation Global Network on Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (GNAFCC) and its affiliated programmes, the WHO-European Healthy Cities Network, the Dublin Declaration on age-friendly cities and communities in Europe and the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP AHA).

For further information on the Covenant, click here

To read the brochure on age-friendly environments in English, click here

The brochure is now also available in French, Italian, Polish and Spanish 

The Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (CARDI) has published a new policy paper on how innovative policy decisions can contribute to planning for an ageing population. Innovation in Policy: Insights for Ageing examines what makes an innovative policy and what are the challenges in implementing that policy. The paper also presents three international case studies of both successful and unsuccessful policy innovations.

Key findings from the report include:

• Most innovations are incremental in nature, involving relatively minor changes to existing services or processes.
• Innovation can be driven by a wide variety of things, including public need, new research, legal necessity, lobbying, new technologies or social innovation.
• The success of an innovative policy depends on many key factors and considerations including public interest, effectiveness, efficiency, fairness and equity.
• Policy innovation can provide a solution to the challenges arising out of the globally ageing population and contribute to policy preparations for demographic change.

A report released by the International Federation on Ageing (IFA) calls for increased public education and awareness programmes, improved public policies and greater integration of preventive eye health interventions into public health systems.

The report emphasizes that measures to prevent vision loss are cost-effective and calls for urgent attention in key areas:

• Integrating visual screening and other preventive eye-health interventions into public health practices for adults of all ages;
• Creating education and awareness programs that include vision-loss prevention, detection, and treatment regimens;
• Reimbursing both treatments and preventive eye health interventions to ensure positive impact on system-wide costs and support for future innovation;
• Developing and utilizing tele-health mechanisms to provide greater access to screening and treatment regardless of geographical location;
• Advocating for vision loss to become widely recognized as a preventable health condition; and
• Conducting more research on the outcomes and efficacy of preventive eye health.

This brochure, published in November 2012, provides a broad and comprehensive overview of all EU actions and their legal context in the field of active and healthy ageing. The aim of the publication is to help older citizens to understand how the European Union functions, how decisions are made, and thereby enable them to get better involved and influence the European policy making process.

The guide consists of three main chapters. The first chapter describes the political context and legal framework in which decisions are taken whilst the third one presents the EU institutions and the decision making process within them. The second chapter elaborates on EU initiatives currently being implemented.

The Demography Report 2010: Older, more numerous and diverse Europeans, produced jointly by Eurostat and the European Commission, describes a Europe which has passed the 500 million population mark, with growth fuelled mainly by migration rather than fertility, and a population that is becoming progressively older and more diverse.

This briefing, produced by EuroHealthNet, presents a summary of the key trends and messages, with special emphasis on issues relating to health and the social determinants of health. Following the basic structure of the original report, this Summary Briefing provides a synopsis of key messages and a selection of graphs concerning fertility, mortality, ageing, migration, families, and the early effects of the economic crisis. These are supplemented by graphs produced using Eurostat data showing Healthy Life Years in relation to life expectancy and minimum pension ages. The briefing ends with policy recommendations based on this demographic data.

The full text of the Demography Report 2010 is available here. To read the Summary, click below.

Bringing Cycling to Life is a handbook containing carefully selected programmes that demonstrate proven techniques for increasing the role of cycling in the daily routines of families, school children, adults and seniors.

This report, by the European Network for Workplace Health Promotion, consists of two parts. The first depicts the demographic context and the status of ageing workers, and the second portrays the measures that can be taken to help improve the status of this group of workers. It focuses on activities and tools available at company level for prolonging working life.

The Roadmap provides an overview of the Coalition's joint commitments in ensuring that all relevant stakeholders will be actively involved in the implementation of the EY2012 and the European Union will do its outmost to complement and support Member States' actions aiming at creating an Age-Friendly European Union by 2020 through the promotion of active ageing and solidarity between generations.

This publication is produced by the European Year 2012 Coalition. A french and italian version can also be found on the website of the European Year 2012 Coalition.