Brussels, 24/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - By refusing to recruit people aged over 30 as police officers in the local police force, the Spanish municipal area of Oviedo is breaching Community law by including a non-justifiable discriminatory principle based on age, according to Advocate General Paolo Mengozzi in his opinion of Thursday 17 July at the European Court of Justice (case C-416/13).
If the European Court of Justice previously authorised Germany to set an age limit in recruitment to its intermediate technical firefighting service (Wolf C-229/08), then why could it not do likewise for local police officers? This argument was put forward by the Spanish municipality and is based also on a law that is also in force in the Principality of the Asturias but it was rejected by the Advocate General. In his view, the directive on creating a general framework promoting equality of treatment in employment and in the workplace (2000/78/EC) is opposed to such discrimination.
The difference between the two cases lies in the fact that the job of local police officer does not require “exceptionally high physical capacities”, according to Mengozzi. The tasks associated with this kind of work are very diverse, ranging from operations requiring physical strength to less demanding tasks, whereas the work of a fire fighter requires a specific physical requirement. The specific exception included in the directive allowing for discrimination based on age due to the pursuit of a legitimate social policy objective cannot be invoked in this case. The age limit stipulated by the Spanish municipality goes well beyond what is needed to respond to training requirements or to guarantee a reasonable period of service before retiring (65 years old) or before being transferred to a less demanding psycho-physical activity (from the age of 58). Therefore, insisting on a maximum age limit of 30 for police officers is neither necessary nor proportionate, according to the conclusions of the Advocate General, who also said that such a limit did not exist in other autonomous communities for Spanish national police officers. (JK)