Minimum health and safety requirements regarding the exposure of workers to the risks arising from physical agents (electromagnetic fields)

The Council took note of ongoing work on the minimum health and safety requirements regarding the exposure of workers to the risks arising from the physical agents (electromagnetic fields) directive. This new directive amends the directive from 2004 (2004/40/EC), which has never entered into force due to problems with its implementation.

The current text has been examined by the Council working party for almost a year now and, in principle, a compromise has been reached on the layout of the annexes, subject to further non-substantial editorial amendments. Broad support has been expressed for the derogations, in particular the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) derogation.

In April 2012, the Danish presidency presented its first compromise proposal on annexes II and III and on article 3. The compromise reached since then concerns annexes II and III containing the values and exposure limits and article 13 on the Commission guide, listing the required information. The member states broadly supported the presidency compromise proposal on article 3 with a special provision for the MRI sector and a general derogation for other industry sectors and the armed forces (NATO), but there was a consensus that article 3 should be further worked on under the Cyprus presidency.

The European Parliament has not yet finalised its internal planning on the procedures; however, it has indicated unofficially that it is awaiting the Council's position, in particular on the technical aspects of the directive.