BRUSSELS: European Union countries can force workers to retire at a mandatory age of 65, the EUs top court said Tuesday in a ruling that analysts said could help reduce unemployment in Europe but could also add to the strain on the Continents already overburdened pension systems.

In a ruling watched closely throughout the bloc, the European Court of Justice said that although discrimination based on age was illegal, the mandatory retirement of workers at age 65 could be justified to promote social policies such as improving employment. But it stressed that mandatory retirement must be accompanied by the adequate provision of pensions for retirees.

“It does not appear unreasonable for the authorities of a member state” to consider such a measure “appropriate and necessary in order to achieve a legitimate aim in the context of national employment policy,” the 13-judge panel ruled in Luxembourg.

The courts ruling rejected an appeal by a Spanish manager, Fйlix Palacios de la Villa, who took his employer, Cortefiel, a clothing manufacturer, to court two years ago when he was forced to retire at age 65, arguing it amounted to dismissal.

The decision could have a ripple effect on workers throughout Europe where other countries are facing challenges to their retirement laws. In a similar case in Britain, the group Heyday, which represents people in or nearing retirement, is challenging British age discrimination rules passed in October 2006 that allow companies to dismiss people at age 65 without justification.

The European Commission, the EU executive, said it was still reviewing the courts decision. But some EU employment officials said privately that they were concerned the ruling could send mixed signals to national policymakers at a time when the EU is combating age discrimination in the workplace and encouraging older people to work longer, to finance their retirements.

The ruling came as Europe is grappling with how to retain its economic competitiveness while faced with widespread youth unemployment and a rapidly aging population.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the European Union in June 2007 was 6.9 percent, down from 7.9 percent a year earlier. By comparison, the United States had an unemployment rate of 4.5 percent and Japan a rate of 3.8 percent, according to Eurostat, the EU statistics agency.

The gap between young and older workers is particularly acute in Eastern Europe, where young, educated and skilled citizens are moving west for higher wages, and leaving an aging workforce behind. Some economists argue that a mandatory retirement age frees up jobs for more productive younger members of the workforce, helping to improve economic growth, reduce unemployment and to pay for the demands of an aging population.

But they add that such benefits could be offset by a sudden influx of retirees, who could further hurt an already overburdened European pension system - especially in countries like those in Eastern Europe, where fewer and fewer people are contributing to the pension and health systems.

Andre Sapir, an economist at Bruegel, a Brussels-based policy-research organization, argued that the main demographic policy challenge facing Europe is not mandatory retirement age but, rather, early retirement.

He said that in the 1980s and 1990s, many countries, including Belgium, Germany and France, adopted early-retirement policies in the hope that they would bring younger people into the work force and improve employment.

Instead, he said, the policies raised pension costs and so increased the cost of labor. Now, he said, European countries must reverse the trend by weaning citizens from the notion that it is part of the social contract between citizen and state to retire early with a generous pension.

“This ruling will have little effect, since it confirms the status quo and allows countries to continue to have discretion over labor market and social policies,” he said. “What is really needed is for governments to push back the actual age of retirement, since the mandatory age of retirement may be 65 in many countries, but people are retiring earlier, and this is inducing too many costs.”

Groups representing aging workers have called for countries to scrap the mandatory retirement age, saying that would not only give workers who wish to continue working the option to do so, but also enable employers to retain some of their most experienced and valuable staff, while allowing workers to finance their own pensions.

AN ASPIRING horror novelist has been arrested after police discovered his girlfriend’s torso in his closet, a leg in the refrigerator and bones in a cereal box.

Jose Luis Calva told police he had boiled some of his girlfriend’s flesh but that he had not eaten it.

Calva claimed he was a writer and poet - officers found the draft of a novel entitled Cannibalistic Instincts.

Investigators are trying to determine if chunks of fried meat found in a pan in the apartment in Mexico City were human.

Police went to Calva’s apartment after neighbours reported a smell. They discovered the dismembered body of his girlfriend, Alejandra Galeana, a 30-year-old pharmacy clerk, in a closet.

Her family had reported her missing on Friday and told police of her relationship with Calva.

Calva is also being investigated over the killings of two other women - another pharmacy worker and an unidentified prostitute..

He tried to run from police to avoid arrest, but was struck by a car and was still in hospital last night.

A TOUGH new security regime at airports is turning queues of passengers into potential terrorist targets, MPs warned today.

The House of Commons Transport Committee said hundreds of travellers crammed into tight spaces could become a security hazard.

The all party group has recommended that speeding up check-in times and baggage clearance to reduce the security queues should be a priority.

They say that the scale of the terror threat was starkly illustrated by the recent attempted car bomb attack on Glasgow Airport.

As millions of travellers fly abroad for their summer holidays, the committee makes a string of recommendations to try and tackle the problem.

Its report says: “Moving passengers more swiftly through to air side will in itself reduce the threat.

“Speeding up check-in times and reducing the security queue should be a priority for airports and airlines.”

Committee chairman Gwyneth Dunwoody said: “Because of the necessary measures that are now in place, passengers are finding it more uncomfortable and time consuming to begin their journeys. Security is the issue which currently has the most significant impact on passengers’ experiences of air travel.”

The committee was told by Professor Alan Hatcher, Principal of the International School for Security and Explosives Education, that with bags not being searched when people entered the terminal he was concerned that queues of hundreds of people were effectively creating new targets.

In evidence given before the Glasgow Airport incident, Chris Goater, from the Airport Operators Association, said the view of experts was that the primary terrorist threat is from explosives getting on to aircraft.

The Department for Transport defended its handling of the security threat insisting that aviation was a particular “iconic target” for terrorists.

A spokesman said: “We have made it clear to the aviation industry and in particular the airport operators that better preparations need to be in place as the holiday season gets under way.”

He added that the new baggage rules introduced last August met “a very real threat”.

The spokesman went on: “The Government has already launched a 1.5 million advertising campaign in the national press to remind passengers to ‘arrive prepared’ and, where possible, is introducing changes to help make the security process quicker.

“But we have to be satisfied that any changes will not compromise the safety of passengers.”

The British Airports Authority, which runs seven major airports including Edinburgh, Heathrow and Gatwick, defended its handling of the security issue

It said: “We have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on security and a further 20m after the extra demands were imposed on us. We regularly put our hands in our pockets.”

The committee also made a number of other recommendations including:

Airlines should always advertise additional fees, taxes and charges up front;

there should be a government review of telephone charges for ticket bookings;

the British Airports Authority should cease to be run as a monopoly;

there should be a review of airport car parking charges;

more robust systems are needed to stop the loss and mishandling of baggage.

The committee also complains about British Airways’ confusing baggage rules and says that airlines as a whole try to sidestep European Union rules on compensating passengers for delays and cancellations.

It calls for a flying ban on disruptive passengers. Indian doctor terror charges ‘to be dropped’

A DECISION by Australia’s chief prosecutor to review evidence against an Indian doctor charged over the Glasgow terror attack suggests the case is about to collapse, an independent legal expert said today.

Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions Damian Bugg said yesterday that he was reviewing the case against Mohammed Haneef who is charged with supporting a terror organisation in connection with the attack.

Mr Bugg’s review comes amid criticism that Haneef’s case has been mishandled and that the evidence is weak, although he has given no reason for the review.

But prominent lawyer Peter Faris said the move suggested the charge could be dropped within days. “I have no doubt that the reason that Bugg has intervened is to find a way out of the impasse,” Mr Faris said.

“To put it bluntly, they have no case.”

“I would be fairly confident that the charges will be dropped probably tomorrow, if not tomorrow, Monday,” he said.

Haneef, 27, was arrested on July 2 at Brisbane international airport.

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