Europe is becoming reality 
and history is giving it a new opportunity.
We senior citizens are being faced with new challenges

Following in the footsteps of our founding resolution in Madrid in 1995, the Vienna Declaration of 1996, the Cologne Resolutions of 1999 and the Brussels Congress in 2000, the European Senior Citizens Union (ESCU) affirms the inalienability of its principles:

• that the Christian conception of man is and remains the yardstick of our actions

• that harmony is to be established between ethical demands and economical and social ones

• that mankind is called to freedom and solidarity

The ESCU adopts a position:

on the assumption of an accountable freedom

• in the relationships between the individual and society

• in the discussions about human dignity

• on the precept of the welfare state: “dignified work for all”, and

• on solidarity between the generations.

The ESCU highlights ways, linked to these principles, which are intended to help bring the dialogue between the generations to a point at which the much-lamented, generational conflict will not arise.

Our objective is:

An ACTIVE CITIZENS’ SOCIETY
as a concept of forward-looking action.

• The family must be acknowledged, protected and encouraged as the natural and fundamental element of society.
• Active citizens’ society means a new distribution of work and duties between the state, citizens and free social groups through mutual and complementary cooperation in tasks.
• The active citizens’ society replaces centralistic, authoritarian super-structures of the state and thus recognises only a subsidiary welfare policy that finds its continuity in voluntary solidarity and ends in the state organised solidarity for those evidently in need of help.
• Voluntary activities must be supported.
• Free enterprise is a prerequisite for the creation of employment for all.

The ESCU places the following demands on its own actions and on politics in Europe:

• We want to learn to exploit the process of ageing by using our experience of life in the counsel of young people and in the further development of our society. We know that this can foster a positive sense of self-worth.
• Education in old age is also the “empowerment” to deal with the personal opportunity for long life.
• Senior citizens must be encouraged to familiarise themselves with information and communication technologies, in order to live in the information society.
• Affirming research that is aimed at improving of the quality of life while respecting ethical principles.
• All questions of social policy (pension, health, welfare state and taxes ...) are intricately related to each other. In the interests of the common good, no narrow interests should have priority.
• Social security offers clearly-structured protection for all generations and, based on the assumption that well-being will be safeguarded, and provided that financial aid is continually reviewed, it guarantees a protected minimum social subsistence level.
• The freedom of the press and media must observe cultural values, ethics and custom out of respect for human beings.
• The responsibility of our society for the future assumes, with a view to globalisation, that capital is employed in the service of the social market economy.
• Solidarity and justice require active contributions and model examples by the churches and other community groups and non-governmental organisations.
• Understanding between the generations requires the participation of all generations, partly by integrating senior citizens in politics and political decision-making.

In a new world order subsidiary structures based on voluntarily agreed regulations are all the more significant, if they accord with the Christian conception of mankind and are linked to the code of values that has been developed hitherto in our western world.