Heyday questions finalised for ECJ
by Sarah
Those of you who read our blog regularly may already be aware of the challenge by Heyday to the validity of the Age Discrimination laws which came into force on 1st October 2006. Heyday have connections with age concern and they were concerned about the legality of the provisions within the Regulations concerning retirement and the justification defence and in particular whether the Directive has been correctly implemented.
The Court decided that it would refer the matter to the ECJ but has taken, in traditional style, months to finalise the questions for the ECJ (eight!!). The questions are quite technical concerning the scope of the Directive and whether it permits Member States to introduce legislation which provides the justification defence and whether there are any practical differences between the Regulations and Directive in this regard.
It is not expected that the case will be heard until next year with a Judgment probably not before 2009! As a firm we are starting to see the effect of the age discrimination legislation trickle in. We have a couple of live cases on these issues at the moment. So watch this space for further developments, as always.
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