In February 2004 the European Commission released a report on the how the Framework Directive of 1989 and 5 individual Directives on health and safety have been transposed into national law and applied.
The goal of health and safety legislation is to provide a minimum standard level playing field for companies and increase protection for workers. The report notes a structural change has taken place. Health and safety measures at the workplace are reported to have widely contributed towards improved working conditions, boosting productivity, competitiveness and employment. The statistical evidence as well as the national reporting on achievements point to an important improvement in terms of health and safety protection. They show that the implementation and application of the EU legislation played a crucial role in bringing down the figures.
However, in absolute numbers, every year nearly 5 200 workers die as a result of a work related accident and there are still about 4.8 million accidents per year. This means also that about two thirds of the accidents lead to an absence of more than 3 days at work. Almost 14% of workers suffered more than one accident in a year. Annually about 158 million days’ work are lost.
The report notes that high risk sectors and groups such as SMEs, young people, temporary contracts are all areas where there has been weak implementation of the safety Directives.
7% of those who are involved in an accident cannot return to the same job and 4% must reduce their working hours or cannot work any longer. This ia a major setback for trying to deliver the Lisbon full employment goal. It is also evidence for the fact that ’more and better’ jobs are two sides of the same coin.
Every year, nearly 300,000 workers will get various degrees of permanent disabilities, resulting from a workplace related accident or disease. It is estimated that the total costs to the economy amounts to between 2.6% and 3.8% of GNP. All these data are testimony of the high economic costs of not having appropriate social policy in place. The still high levels of accidents and diseases, linked to the gaps as documented in detail in the report, underline the need for reinforced attention to the sectors and workers concerned to bring about the necessary changes.
