The 2018 Ageing Report was prepared as part of the mandate the Economic and Financial Affairs (ECOFIN) Council gave to the Economic Policy Committee (EPC) in 2015 to update and further deepen its common exercise of age-related expenditure projections, on the basis of a new population projection by Eurostat.

It is the sixth report with long-term projections of the budgetary impact of the ageing population in the EU Member States and Norway, covering the period 2016–2070. In response to the mandate, the EPC mandated a working group, the Ageing Working Group (AWG) under the chairmanship of Godwin Mifsud, to take forward the work needed to discharge this remit.