Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 19 
way by OSH legislation or OSH practice. The principle of employer responsibility for working conditions 
of workers is undermined or at least blurred in such situations.  
Future solutions could focus on several aspects — a new definition of ‘work’ or of ‘employment’, 
stronger individual responsibility, or extended state interventions to guarantee OSH also in such 
working and employment conditions. There are some examples of such solutions but to date most of 
them focus on better information, that is, stronger individual responsibility.  
Undeclared and illegal employment is scarcely visible in the statistics. Due to the difficult conditions 
for research, the overall OSH situation in these types of work is widely unknown; in case study -based 
investigative studies, the working conditions — including safety and health — for this group are mostly 
regarded as worse compared to workers with a regular work contract. It seems to be necessary to 
consider different research and action initiatives for this type of work, also in collaboration with other 
state supervising authorities.  
The health data clearly show an ever-growing share of work tasks that go along with or even require 
physical inactivity. Inactive work is often characterised by permanent sitting combined with high 
requirements for visual and mental focusing during work, for example,  towards digital equipment or to 
traffic situations. Serious indirect health consequences of such inactivity can be seen in the strong 
increase in certain widespread diseases or disease-supporting factors, like obesity.  
Even 15 years after the enlargement  of the EU in 2004, significant differences between Member 
States can still be observed regarding several working conditions. The data demonstrate that the worst 
status concerning physical risks, wellbeing, and expectations to do the job until the age of 60 — is almost 
always present in eastern EU Member States, followed by southern Member States, all compared to the 
status in central, western and northern Member States . For psychosocial risks, it is just the other way 
around, these are more often reported in central, western and northern Member States.  
International organisations complain about an unfair divide of OSH risks in globalised supply 
chains, be it in mining, metallurgy, textile production, disposal of hazardous waste or other sectors. The 
ILO decided in June 2022 to make OSH one of the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. In this 
context, 10 ILO conventions and instruments are considered now as fundamental, including two OSH 
conventions: the Occupational Safety and Health Convention, of 1981 (No. 155) and the Promotional 
Framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention, of 2006 (No. 187). Ethical, fairness and 
justice considerations have led to more activities on decent, safe and healthy work in developing 
countries and a fair share of risks at work in global supply chains. These are important initiatives, but 
until now they only slightly changed the overall situation when looking at the global scale of the issue.