Legal experts say a key ruling by the European Court of Justice may mean it is already illegal to discriminate on age grounds in the UK, even though the new laws are not scheduled to take effect until October.

The German Labour Courts, the equivalent of industrial tribunals in the UK, referred the case of Mangold v Helm to the European Court of Justice. Like the UK, Germany will implement the EU Directive on Age Discrimination later this year. There has been a run-up period of about six years to allow member states to implement the directive.  However, the German government passed a law in 2003 that was found to be at odds with the intent of the EU directive.

The law effectively discriminated against older workers on fixed-term contracts by giving them less protection than others on these contracts. There is no equivalent of such a law in the UK.
However, Gareth Williams of London law firm Penn Legal says the ruling in the case demonstrates important principles.
The first is that during the period given for the implementation of a directive, governments should not introduce legislation that contradicts the objectives of the directive.
If they do so, the legislation is likely to be disapplied by the European Court of Justice.

The second is that when applying laws that are themselves created to give effect to other EU directives, the European Court of Justice requires those laws to be interpreted in line with all directives, including those not yet fully implemented.
The third possible principle, says Williams, is that the European Court of Justice has now effectively made unjustified age discrimination illegal.

He added: “To say the European Court of Justice has effectively already banned age discrimination is probably going too far, although the judgement does show that in some circumstances the directive is already having an effect and needs to be taken into account by our courts.” 
Kevin Barrow of Tarlo Lyons says the principles of the case could have consequences, but added: “I don’t see a spate of cases in the UK on the back of this. The key thing for recruiters is to have anti-discrimination policies in place now. This applies to agencies, as they must not aid discrimination.”