Consultant: Addressing age-discrimination The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that age discrimination is rarely treated with the same gravity in law and practice as other forms of discrimination, such as that based on gender or disability. Discriminatory age-based measures to restrict older people’s movement have been used at every stage of the response. Elsewhere, older age has been a criterium to deny people access to scarce medical resources. The use and acceptance of measures that discriminate on the basis of age reflect the inconsistency of legal guarantees prohibiting age discrimination in national legislation. Anti-discrimination laws in many countries do not prohibit age discrimination or only deal with it partially, for example in limited aspects of life or only as a single ground. Often, such laws do not recognise intersectional discrimination, for example on the grounds of age and sex. The European Commission reports that, beyond the area of employment, age is probably the least regulated ground for discrimination across Europe