“Reducing by a quarter the work-related illnesses and accidents on the workplace in the EU by 2012”: that’s the declared objective of the new five-year strategy for health and safety on the workplace adopted by the European Commission last week as a contribution to the existing health and safety policies in the individual member states. In spite of some improvement in recent years (reduction of fatal accidents by 17% between 2002 and 2004), much still remains to be done, bearing in mind that some four million accidents at work that cause absences from work of more than three days are registered each year. The problems vary from country to country, sector, business (82% of overall incidents and 90% of fatal accidents occur in small and medium firms), and category of workers. The Eu Strategy consists of four main points: improvement, simplification and application of existing legislation, also through exchanges of good practices and awareness-raising campaigns; definition of individual national strategies; inclusion of issues linked to health and safety on the workplace in European policies of research, education and health; and analysis of possible new risks, including the “pathologies caused by psychological stress”, constantly increasing.
