Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 67 
Table 16: Non-fatal accidents estimated via coefficient of fatal accidents, 4 benchmark countries149 
 
The application of the average coefficient of four benchmark countries to all the EU27 leads to an 
estimated number of non- fatal accidents with more than three days absence of approximately 4.98 
million. This is 1.84 million more work accidents than reported in ESAW; the reporting rate of ESAW 
for non-fatal work accidents with four or more days of absence would be at around 63%. Country-
specific reports about underreporting determine similar figures and support these findings.150  
There seems to be a difference in the reporting level between countries with a universal health system 
where the reasons for an accident play a minor role and do not impact compensation and treatment. In 
more fragmented health systems with distinguished work accident insurances, the ‘sphere’ (work or 
private life) — where the accident took place — is more relevant and influences the granted treatment 
and compensat ion. Some researchers perform this calculation only based on the coefficient of two 
countries, Finland and Germany. 151 Both have separated insurance- based systems and are regarded 
as countries with a high reporting level. The coefficient would be 1, 734 (average of both countries 
without weighing of population size); this would result in an estimated number of non- fatal work 
accidents of 5.91 million. 
Self-reports are another option to identify the number of work accidents . In the Eurostat LFS Ad hoc 
modules of 2007, 2013 and 2020,152 ‘Employed persons’ were asked whether they had a work accident 
in the past 12 months.