The ... ageing report

To assess the long-term sustainability of public finances in the EU Member States, the ECOFIN Council mandated the Economic Policy Committee (EPC) to update its comprehensive long-term budgetary projections by the summer of 2024. The update of the Ageing Report, a joint report by the EPC and the European Commission (DG ECFIN), should be based on new population projections by Eurostat. The report is prepared by the EPC's Ageing Working Group (AWG). It was first published in 2006 and has been updated every three years since then. The Ageing Report is a unique exercise in that it provides detailed economic and budgetary projections for the EU Member States and Norway up to 2070 based on common assumptions and methodologies. The report provides a vast set of comparable and internally consistent information for 28 countries. These give insight into the timing of population ageing, its economic implications and the associated budgetary challenges. Such pressures are already manifest in many countries and are expected to accelerate as large cohorts of baby boomers retire, life expectancy continues to rise and fertility rates remain low from a historical point of view. Being a joint EPC-Commission product, the Ageing Report provides a shared assessment between the Member States and the Commission on how ageing costs might develop in the future, considering the latest information and legislated reforms. The projections are therefore a cornerstone of various surveillance processes at the EU level. They inform the coordination of economic policies, in particular under the European Semester, the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the annual assessment of the sustainability of public finances and fiscal surveillance under the Stability and Growth Pact.