Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-22-Speech-2-263"
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"en.20021022.10.2-263"2
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". – Mr President, I would like to thank Mr Hughes and particularly the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs for their close cooperation. The communication entitled 'Adapting to change in work and society: a new Community strategy on health and safety at work for 2002-2006' is a strategy on health and safety for the period in question.
It is a new strategy which includes some key new elements. These elements concern the quality of work and the need to combine a variety of different political instruments such as legislation, social dialogue, progressive measures and best practices, corporate social responsibility and economic incentives. Of course, the basis of the analysis is that health and safety issues are related to competitiveness and there is always a cost when we neglect social policies.
The main points in this communication are as follows. Firstly, and I think this must be very clear, it is not just a proposal from the Commission, it is also a Community strategy, so there is a need to include all the European partners including, at political level, the European, national and regional authorities. At operational level, it concerns the social partners and, at the level of services, it concerns all institutions dealing with health, prevention services and insurance organisations.
A very interesting point in this communication is the question how we can develop the prevention culture. There are, of course, a number of priorities concerning the need to reinforce our capacity for risk surveillance and the need for better legislation. I totally agree with the need for simplification and codification, which is one of the commitments in the Commission strategy. There is also a need for cooperation between the Commission and the national authorities as far as the implementation of the strategies is concerned and, at the same time, for cooperation at international level. I have tried to outline in a few words the main points of the communication, because I believe that responding to Mr Hughes' specific remarks will make for a more interactive debate.
The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs made some specific proposals, many of which the Commission has worked on and taken into account. Some of the proposals could perhaps be examined in greater depth. We could be more precise in terms of the timetables and description of the activities that must be carried out, and could do this in a meeting with the Committee on Employment, when we can discuss the activities and proposals of the strategy individually, particularly the five points referred to by Mr Hughes.
Firstly, there is the issue of SMEs, which was raised in the report. You are aware of the problems we have with the SAFE programme. Thanks to Parliament we now have a specific budget in Bilbao for SMEs and we can discuss the details for implementing this project as well as the timetable.
Regarding legislation on stress, an analysis has been undertaken. We have launched the first stage of consultation. Again, we can be more definite. The same applies to the proposal for a directive on workplace ergonomics and issues concerning the manual-handling directive. The analysis is under way. We can be specific about the timetables for the study and can make specific commitments on when and how we are going to launch the first stage of consultation.
Next there is the issue of women: on that there is total agreement. Gender mainstreaming is a general principle in all actions in our strategy paper. As regards benchmarking, you are right that perhaps we could find a better way to enforce the procedure. The report specifically refers to the need to encourage Member States to use benchmarking in this area, but maybe we can discuss this together to see how it can be made more concrete. Perhaps we can discuss this with Member States and ask them to set firm objectives. Then we could have a report seeing what progress they are making. It cannot be an obligation – we cannot oblige Member States to do it – but maybe we could present it in a more organised way to see how benchmarking can move forward.
Finally, I shall comment on simplification and codification. We are working on a total evaluation of health and safety legislation. This is one of the main commitments in the strategy. It is not an easy task but our final goal is to simplify the provisions, see whether they are consistent and then codify them. One commitment is to codify the health and safety directive."@en1
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