The final conference, co-organised by Confesal and CECOP, began with a general presentation of the project by Francesc de Abad Rigla.
Keynote addresses to the participants were made by Miguel Millana as president of Confesal, Luca Pastorelli, president of Diesis, in the name of Legacoop, and Bruno Roelants for CECOP. Montserrat Parramon made a detailed presentation of the findings of the project.
On the trade union side spoke Julian Bir from ETUC on Europe's demographic changes, as well as José Maria Zufiaur from UGT, Jesús Mora from CCOO, and Agostino Megale from IRED-CGIL. On the side of the European Union institutions, two presentations were made from the Commission's DG Employment and Social Affairs: one by Julius Op de Beke on the European Commission's Communication 2006/571, and one by Michèle Thozet on how the Equal programme had been dealing with the fight against all forms of labour discrimination, including age.
Member of the European Parliament Alejandro Cercas introduced the whole debate of aging at work in the European Parliament's work. Two seasoned members of the European Economic and Social Committee then underlined several central aspects. Ernst Erik Ehnmark, president of the EECS's group 2 (trade unions) emphasised the need to put far more emphasis on training for aged workers. Jan Olsson, former president of group 3 (where the social economy is represented) and vice president of CECOP, underlined the need for social economy enterprises to be models in benchmarking in this field and to disseminate good practice in this field.
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