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The notion of age discrimination has just recently entered French law. This is important to understand why this concept took so long before beeing introduced in France. Several reasons might explained this delay. Unlike civil law, labor and social security law were designed to single out the aged in order to try to protect them. In France, the concept of discrimination was not examined in global terms for many years. But progressively, under the impetus of European law, French law has extended legislation prohibiting employment discrimination to various categories of workers and recently to other employees. This has led to an ambivalent understanding of age discrimination. The legal criterion of age is both a condition for legal protection and a possible indicator of discrimination in the workplace. This calls for an analysis of the notion of age discrimination in the absence of a legal definition. Its contours could be defined in relation to discrimination based on other criteria. Like the notion of discrimination, the proof of age discrimination raises numerous questions regarding the new legal provisions which introduce a shift in the burden of proof in favor of older.