Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 21 
composition of the workforce and the climate influence on working conditions challenge all stakeholders 
in the field of OSH to keep pace with all these developments. In addition, the EU and consequently also 
OSH in the EU is increasingly and significantly influenced by the globalisation of product and service 
chains and the internationalisation of its workforce.  
This report is a common effort of EU-OSHA and major stakeholders. It is a product of EU-OSHA’s activity 
‘EU OSH Info system’ and aims at interpreting and analysing the quantitative and qualitative data on 
OSH in the EU that have been collected during the past six years in this activity. The purpose of this 
report is to summarise status, trends and key aspects, preferably based on statistics, data and 
related analytical research findings.  
The idea of a permanent observation or monitoring of the situation of working conditions and OSH is not 
new. In the past three EU OSH strategies between 2002 and 2020, it was always an objective to improve 
the know ledge on working conditions and OSH and by doing that to facilitate better evidence for 
stakeholders and give them a solid base for their activities and prioritisation. 
The idea of better monitoring was strengthened by DG EMPL in 2015 in a broad and systematic effort 
to develop a new EU OSH Info system, based on indicators. The development and design of such a 
system was done in collaboration between DG EMPL, EU -OSHA, newly established National Contact 
Points, and the Advisory Committee on Safety and Health. Many indicators were discussed and 
subsequently included or discarded, depending on their relevance but also depending on the availability 
of reliable data and the efforts needed to collect such data. For example, a good description of working 
conditions based on EU -wide surveys or statistical data is available, whilst a detailed description of 
national prevention systems would require considerable research efforts and is until now not part of this 
info system. In 2023, the info system provides more than 125 datasets for 16 major indicators.  
All these data are presented online in a visualised mode, the OSH Barometer 1. This data visualisation 
tool does not create new data but combines major OSH-related and publicly available quantitative 
data with qualitative descriptions and analysis. Many of the indicators and data collections that are used 
in this report are published in the OSH Barometer. All quantitative indicators are based on available 
data, that is, they are not based on new research but on existing sources. These sources are dispersed, 
the info system brings it all together and makes access and overview significantly easier.  
Many of the key findings of this report are based on previous work conducted by EU-OSHA; many 
of these data and research res ults show obvious and (nearly) unambiguously accepted findings. 
Sometimes the existing data and findings are weak and ambiguous and allow quite diverging 
interpretations of the reasons and reality behind such data. For these areas and topics, even a combined 
analyses of quite different sources can only present hypotheses and no clear evidence; in these cases, 
the current knowledge is not more than a starting point to clarify open questions and to undertake 
research, data collection and data analysis efforts. 
This report aims at contributing to better evidence  as a base for more effective and comprehensive 
actions. A precise picture can better inform priority choices to be made by the legislators and state 
institutions, by enterprises, workers and their associations, and by OSH professionals. It can result in 
the ultimately desired effective protection of all groups of workers, in all sectors, all occupations, all work 
tasks and all forms of work.