Stec and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC]

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 85

April 2006

Stec and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC] - 65731/01

Judgment 12.4.2006 [GC]

Article 14

Discrimination

Differences in the entitlement for men and women to certain industrial injuries social security benefits: no violation

Article 37

formerly Hepple and Others and Kimberv. United Kingdom

The applicant Mrs Hepple informed the Court that for personal reasons she no longer wished to continue with the case; her application was struck out. Subsequently Mrs Hepple informed the Court that she had changed her mind. The Court decided, however, not to restore her application to the list.

Facts: The pensionable age in the United Kingdom for persons born before 6 April 1950 is 65 for men and 60 for women. The applicants, two men and two women, all suffered work-related injuries and received reduced earnings allowances as a result; all received retirement allowances when they reached their respective pensionable ages. For all applicants, this resulted in various ways in a drop in income that would have been spared them had they been of the sex opposite to theirs and hence subject to the other pensionable age. In the course of the domestic proceedings, the domestic tribunal sought a preliminary ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which on 23 May 2000 ruled that there was no incompatibility with Council Directive 79/7/EEC on Equal Treatment in Social Security.

Law: Article 14 – The Court had held already in its decision on admissibility (6 July 2005) that the applicants’ interests fell within the scope of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. All agree that it is reasonable to aim to stop paying reduced earnings benefits after the age when the beneficiaries would in any case have retired. A single cut-off date divorced from the pensionable age, as advocated by the applicants, would however not have achieved the same level of consistency with the State pension scheme, which is based on a “notional end of working life” at 60 for women and 65 for men. Nor would such a scheme have been as easy to understand and administer. It is moreover significant that the ECJ found that since the reduced earnings allowance was intended to compensate people of working age for loss of earning capacity due to an accident at work or occupational disease, it was necessary for the sake of coherence to link the age-limits. Both the policy decision to stop paying reduced earnings allowances to persons who would otherwise have retired from paid employment and the decision to achieve this aim by linking the cut-off age to the notional “end of working life”, or State pensionable age, therefore pursued a legitimate aim and were reasonably and objectively justified. The remaining question is whether the underlying difference in treatment between men and women in the State pension scheme was acceptable under Article 14. It would appear that the difference in treatment was adopted in order to mitigate financial inequality and hardship arising out of the woman’s traditional unpaid role of caring for the family in the home rather than earning money in the workplace. At their origin, therefore, the differential pensionable ages were intended to correct “factual inequalities” between men and women and appear therefore to have been objectively justified under Article 14. It follows that the difference in pensionable ages continued to be justified until such time that social conditions had changed so that women were no longer substantially prejudiced because of a shorter working life. This change, must, by its very nature, have been gradual, and it would be difficult or impossible to pinpoint any particular moment when the unfairness to men caused by differential pensionable ages began to outweigh the need to correct the disadvantaged position of women. It is significant that many of the other Contracting States still maintain a difference in the ages at which men and women become eligible for the State retirement pension. In the light of the original justification for the measure as correcting financial inequality between the sexes, the slowly evolving nature of the change in women’s working lives, and in the absence of a common standard amongst the Contracting States, the Court finds that the United Kingdom cannot be criticised for not having started earlier on the road towards a single pensionable age. Having once begun the move towards equality, moreover, the Court does not consider it unreasonable of the Government to carry out a thorough process of consultation and review, nor can Parliament be condemned for deciding in 1995 to introduce the reform slowly and in stages. Given the extremely far-reaching and serious implications, for women and for the economy in general, these are matters which clearly fall within the State’s margin of appreciation.

Conclusion: no violation (sixteen votes to one).

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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