Community statistics on public health and health and safety at work

The European Parliament adopted a resolution drafted by Karin SCHEELE (PES, AT) and made some amendments to the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on Community statistics on public health and health and safety at work.

The main amendments were as follows:

- the recitals stress the need to take into account the increase in the proportion of women on the labour market and to respond to their specific needs in relation to policies on health and safety at work;

- they state that it is important that gender and age be included in the breakdown variables as this allows the impact of gender and age differences on health and safety in the workplace to be taken into account;

- complementary financing for the collection of the data in the field of health and safety will be provided in the framework of the Community Programme for Employment and Social Solidarity - Progress, as established by Decision No 1672/2006/EC. Within this framework financial resources should be used to help Member States in further building up national capacities to implement improvements and new tools for statistical data collection in the field of health and safety at work;

- the Regulation establishes a common framework for the systematic production of Community statistics on public health and health and safety at work. Parliament added that the statistics shall be produced in compliance with standards on impartiality, reliability, objectivity, cost-effectiveness and statistical confidentiality;

- MEPs called for the statistics to include, in the form of a minimum data set, information required for Community action in the field of public health, for supporting national strategies for the development of high-quality, universally accessible and sustainable health care as well as for Community action in the field of health and safety at work;

- within the EU, studies and surveys of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work and of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions shall be taken into account. Outside the EU, cooperation with the United Nations, and especially with the International Labour Organisation and World Health Organisation, shall be further enhanced;

- in the Annexes, it was stated that statistics would be required on: tracking of any disease whose incidence is increasing or decreasing; accidents and injuries, including those related to consumer safety, and alcohol- and drug-related harm; protection against possible pandemics and transmissible diseases;

- Parliament specified that work-related health problems and illnesses are those health problems and illnesses which can be caused, worsened or jointly caused by working conditions. This includes physical and psychosocial health problems;

- statistics would include characteristics of the diseased person, including gender, age and employment status, and of the disease or health-related problems, and characteristics of the enterprise and workplace, including size and sector of the enterprise.