Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 144 
 
 
States and who apply to be admitted, or who have been admitted under the terms of this Directive, to the territory 
of a Member State for the purpose of employment as seasonal workers.’ here (p. 6). 
Molinero Gerbeau & González Ferrer, 2018: EU DIRECTIVE ON SEASONAL WORKERS  
These data are partly unreliable, to quote: ‘Member States can decide what they consider as “seasonal workers” 
because there is no common definition and numerical instrument allowing to evaluate the same phenomenon 
making data on EU’s seasonal workers incomparable within countries. The Polish case is very illustrative of the 
deficiencies of the actual European statistical system where, for instance, real data on seasonal workers for 
certain countries coexist with data on the number of Declarations received under the Polish Declaration System 
that are just intentions to hire foreigners, but not effective work or residence permits.’ (p. 4) 
Definition of seasonal worker in DIRECTIVE 2014/36/EU OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE 
COUNCIL of 26 February 2014 on the conditions of entry and stay of third-country nationals for the purpose of 
employment as seasonal workers. 
70 De Wispelaere et al., 2022: Posted workers in the European Union - Facts and figures 
71 European Commission, 2020: COVID-19: Guidelines of the Commission on seasonal workers in the EU. 
Factsheet on practical examples and best practices 
72 OECD, 2019: Pensions at a Glance 2019, OECD and G20 Indicators (p. 67).  
73 OECD, 2019: Pensions at a Glance 2019, OECD and G20 Indicators (p. 69). 
74 OECD, 2019: The Sharing and Gig Economy: Effective Taxation of Platform Sellers: Forum on Tax 
Administration or Employment outlook. 
75 Eurofound, 2020: New forms of employment: 2020 Update 
76 A first approach to use administrative data: Balogh et al., 2021: Non-standard employment and mortality in 
Belgian workers: A census-based investigation 
77 Please note that the working conditions of important groups of non-standard work could not sufficiently be 
covered in this chapter, e.g. for seasonal workers, migrant workers, second jobs of students, employees and 
pensioners, and self-employed. The main reason for this is that quantitative EU-wide data on the OSH situations 
of these groups are rare or not reliable due to missing statistics or surveys. There are numerous qualitative 
reviews and case studies about these groups, and a detailed description would go beyond the frame of this 
report.  
78 Directive 89/654/EEC concerning the minimum safety and health requirements for the workplace  excludes five 
types of work, to quote: ‘This Directive shall not apply to: (a) means of transport used outside the undertaking and 
/or the establishment, or workplaces inside means of transport; (b) temporary or mobile work sites; …’. 
79 Directive 90/270/EEC of 29 May 1990 on the minimum saf ety and health requirements for work with display 
screen equipment (fifth individual Directive within the meaning of Article 16 (1) of Directive 89/391/EEC), here 
80 EU-OSHA’s maintenance campaign revealed that maintenance and repair work has an accident risks far over 
average. EU-OSHA, 2010: Safe maintenance in practice (p. 10): ‘Occupational accidents during maintenance 
work are numerous. Based on the data from several European countries, it is estimated that 10-15% of fatal 
accidents at work, and 15-20% of all accidents, are connected with maintenance.’ 
81 No statistical data available for EU.  
82 Persons in employment by main place of work, frequency of working at other locations and working from home, 
LFS Ad hoc module: Work at home, percentage of Employed persons 
83 Eurostat: Working from home in the EU 
84 LFS Ad hoc module Work at home, percentage of Employed persons and LFS regular data collection Employed