AIM welcomes the roadmap published by the European Commission for the Green Paper on Healthy Ageing and looks forward to taking part to the upcoming consultation.

The challenges entailed by demographic change, digitalisation and climate change are to be tackled together.

The roadmap rightly mentions that demographic change is one of the mega-trends which are transforming European societies, the others being climate change and digitalisation. AIM believes none of these trends can be dealt with separately and that they should all be taken into account when working towards solutions to face future challenges. To cite but a few examples: climate change has an impact on the health of older generations but also on the types of jobs available in the labour market and thus on the life-long training to be made available to all; digitalisation has the potential to alleviate some types of heavy works enabling individuals to work for longer but it also entails risks and requires the digital skills of all, including older people, to be improved; etc.
We encourage the European Commission to establish clear links between these three mega-trends and to take digitalisation and climate change into account in the upcoming proposals of its Green Paper.

“Beyond purely economic issues”

AIM welcomes that the European Commission announces that “the Green Paper could go beyond purely economic issues”. AIM is convinced that the Paper should have a strong social and health related focus.
AIM calls on the European Commission to adopt the positive health model and a health in all policies approach in its Green Paper, breaking silos and encouraging cross-sectorial collaboration.
The measures proposed should on the one hand contribute to empower individuals to stay healthy for longer and continue contributing actively to society. On the other hand, it should act on their environment by improving the quality an access to health and long-term care services, by creating age-friendly environments (including workplaces), by tackling risk factors to chronic diseases and creating environments which promote healthy lifestyles, by acting at societal level, redefining intergenerational solidarity and fighting stigma against old age.
Our concrete recommendations can be found here.