Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 122 
compliance harder to verify and, in the absence of that verification procedure, harder to enforce 
(especially in OSH cultures with a history of the prescriptive approach).’ 353 
Regarding the level of compliance with the legal goals or prescriptions, the study authors assess it 
as ‘moderate to good.’ They see major differences depending on the topic and the size of the 
enterprises: 
‘However, the collected data shows that overall c ompliance with the OSH acquis across the EU and 
across establishment sizes is moderate to good. There is no indication that compliance is measurably 
higher in the public sector compared to the private sector. Yet, in reality, compliance varies significantly 
from directive to directive, from MS to MS and across establishment sizes. 
Micro establishments: Cannot be assessed (limited evidence points to poor overall quantitative 
compliance) 
• 10 to 19 employees: Poor overall quantitative compliance 
• 20 to 49 employees: Moderate overall quantitative compliance 
• 50 to 249 employees: Good overall quantitative compliance 
• 250 to 499 employees: Good overall quantitative compliance 
• 500+ employees: Very good overall quantitative compliance’. 354 
In 2018, DG EMPL organised a peer review  on ‘The efficient transposition, implementation and 
enforcement of EU OSH legislation’ for each EU Member State.355 The overall conclusion is positive but 
refers to the difference between formal (paper) compliance and ‘real improvements’:  
‘Although not uniform across employers (with evidence that smaller businesses in particular find some 
of the demands challenging and difficult to implement) indications are also that the transposed legislation 
is being implemented within workplaces. However, there are indications that the fact of implementation 
is not necessarily a true indicator of the quality of that action, with suggestions that “compliance” is to 
some extent a paper exercise and is not always reflected in real improvements in working environments.’ 
The authors of EU -OSHA’s ‘Supporting compliance’ report 356 note the same difference, using the 
terms ‘substantive’ versus ‘rule compliance’ .357 This report and underlying literature review have 
specifically analysed reasons and context for compli ance and non- compliance. They analysed the 
influence of: 
• social norms and social reporting strategies, and corporate social responsibility ; 
• economic incentives and the business case for OSH; 
• the role of supply chain relations in supporting OSH; 
• prevention services; and 
• strategies and practices adopted by OSH regulators.  
They conclude on a variety of aspects: ‘During the last half -century, there has been a significant and 
well documented move away from prescriptive regulatory standards and efforts by national regulatory 
agencies to enforce them towards more principle- , performance-  and process -based regulatory 
requirements …. This shift was originally informed by notions that traditional command and control 
strategies, however compromised by resource or governance, had achieved as much as they were likely 
to, and that different approaches were necessary to bring about the further improvements in OSH that 
were desired.358 (regarding reasons of non- compliance at enterprise level see also the chapter on 
‘Prevention Practices in Enterprises’). 
Not all worker groups, sector s or forms of work are equally covered by these directives. Since the first 
protective OSH  legislations, some important groups or sectors had exceptions from full 
application of OSH legislation. Depending on the Member State, such exceptions are applied to self-
employed and contracted work, military, public sector, mining, workers in the marine sector and offshore 
installations, family members, personal and household services, work in charitable organisations,