Eurostat published its latest statistics on the active ageing in the EU which show that the employment rate for persons aged 60-64 increased from 23% in 2000 to 31% in 2010 and from 50% to 61% for those aged 55-59. With regard to the statistics by country, the share of those aged 55 and over varied between 21% in Ireland and 33% in Germany and Italy in 2010.

Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union presented a new publication entitled "Active ageing and solidarity between generations – a statistical portrait of the European Union 2012". Among the findings, the publication shows that the proportion of the population in the EU27 who are aged 55 and over rose from 25% in 1990 to 30% in 2010, and is estimated to reach around 40% by 2060. The European Union has designated 2012 as the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations, in connection with the demographic challenges presented by this increase.

The data also show that the share of persons aged 55 and over in the total population increased between 1990 and 2010 in all Member States. In 2010, the largest shares of those aged 55-64 were observed in Finland (14.7% of the total population), the Czech Republic and Malta (both 14.1%), and the lowest in Ireland (10.1%), Lithuania (10.7%) and Luxembourg (10.8%). For the age group 65 and over, the highest shares were found in Germany (20.7%), Italy (20.2%) and Greece (18.9%), and the lowest in Ireland (11.3%), Slovakia (12.3%) and Cyprus (13.1%).

On the other hand, employment of the older population has strongly increased over the last decade. While the employment rate for those aged 20-64 in the EU27 increased by 2.1 percentage points (from 66.5% in 2000 to 68.6% in 2010), the rates for older age groups rose more sharply, by 10.6 pp for those aged 55-59 (from 50.3% to 60.9%) and by 7.5 pp for those aged 60 to 64 (from 23.0% to 30.5%). In 2010, the highest employment rates for those aged 55-59 were observed in Sweden (80.7%), Denmark (75.9%) and Finland (72.5%), and the lowest in Poland (45.8%), Slovenia (46.9%) and Malta (49.3%). For those aged 60-64 the highest rates were recorded in Sweden (61.0%), the United Kingdom (44.0%) and Estonia (42.8%), and the lowest in Hungary (13.0%), Malta (14.2%) and Slovakia (17.2%). For those aged 65 and over, the highest employment rates were found in Portugal (16.5%), Romania (13.0%) and Cyprus (12.9%), and the lowest in France and Slovakia (both 1.6%) and Hungary (1.9%).