Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 130 
6.5 Conclusions  
Comprehensive EU legislation and its national transposition form the frame of OSH for enterprises 
and are the base for national legislations and governmental approaches and actions in all Member 
States. According to many studies in different countries, sectors and enterprise sizes, legislation is the 
key driver for preventive actions in enterprises. Moreover, the evaluations of EU  OSH legislation show 
that the EU Directives are the ‘reference frame for national OSH regulatory regimes’.  
The major critical issue is the effective and qualitatively substantive imple mentation of the 
legislation — as opposed to ‘paper’  compliance, that is, the preventive qualit y of risk reduction 
measures at the workplace. Evaluations, expert reviews and surveys, analysing the practical 
implementation in Member States and the practice in enterprises (DG EMPL, EU -OSHA’s supporting 
compliance reports, ESENER, SLIC  evaluations), provide evidence about the current situation, the 
strength and weaknesses of imple mentation, and compliance. EU and national reports show a high 
variety of enterprise practices and governmental actions. Examples from stake holders, professionals 
and practitioners demonstrate best, good, moderate and also bad practices, depending on company 
culture, size, sector and work task.  
The trend is clearly towards a higher awareness and towards a wider coverage of a broader 
spectrum of risks. Support towards preventive measures is not only achieved by legislation but also 
by stakeholder support of multiple kinds, be it interactive support tools, classical guidance 
documents, management systems or European product standards . They all help to better cope 
with the complexity of risks and the selection of adequate preventive measures.  
However, the current data situation is still too diverse and the implementation of OSH  legislation and 
guidance too different to assign a harmonised statement — or a kind of composite indicator — for 
effective implementation of legislation or standards, be it for Member States or for sectors or types 
of workplaces in the EU27. The quantity of risk assessments and preventive measures can be roughly 
estimated, based on ESENER and national surveys, but the quality of these risk assessments and the 
subsequent preventive risk reduction measures can only be assessed on a granular case-by-case level.  
This difficulty to assess a kind of general prevention level  of a M ember State, a sector or an 
occupation is the reason why ‘outcomes’ have such a relevance as quantitative indicators. These 
indicators allow — although mostly being lagging indicators — an assessment on a highly aggregated 
level, like EU Member States, sectors or types of occupations. 
 
OSH Barometer – Steering of OSH Infrastructure, Enforcement Capacity (responsibility of Labour 
Inspectorates and similar state institutions, their powers, the scope of their work and their strategic 
planning): 
https://visualisation.osha.europa.eu/osh-barometer/osh-infrastructure/enforcement-
capacity/establishments-inspected 
ESENER – Data visualisation:  
https://visualisation.osha.europa.eu/esener/en/survey/datavisualisation/2019