Pensionati recalcitranti e discriminazione fondata sull’età

The essay is devoted to age discrimination, with special regard to elderly employees. The author starts from the question whether, and in what limits, the aspiration of elderly employees to retain their jobs after the reaching of retirement age is protected by EU discrimination law. In order to answer the question, she preliminarily focuses on the ECG case law, approaching some theoretical issues, emerging in the Mangold and Kücükdeci decisions: mainly, the controversial horizontal effects of general principles and the also controversial direct effect of the directives that implement general principles. In the second part of the essay, the author develops a critical analysis of the arguments on the basis of which the ECG justifies the measures of compulsory retirement adopted by the member States. She criticizes the use of the reference to the occupational policy, too generic, as well as the under evaluation of the proportionality test.