‘Data protection’ (EPSR).  
The EU treaties form the legal background for the development of specific EU  legislation, related to 
working conditions in general and OSH  in particular. In 1989,  the EU agreed on the Framework 
Directive, a major step regarding OSH.340 This directive introduced a distinguished preventive approach, 
based on a comprehensive risk assessment, as a dominant legal standard across all Member States. 
Its legal obligations prescribe several basic principles: 
• the responsibility of employers for OSH, that is, ‘the employer shall take the measures 
necessary for the safety and health protection of workers, including prevention of occupational 
risks and provision of information and training’, 341 and the obligation of workers ‘to take care 
as far as possible of his own safety and health and that of other persons affected …’;342 
• the obligation to evaluate all risks (risk assessment); 
• the preference of the risk elimination at source (combating the risk at source), a hierarchy of 
prevention measures, replacing the dangerous by the non- or the less dangerous;