Name: Committee on Employment and Social Affairs Ordinary meeting
Uploaded: 2026-06-02T12:30:00+00:00

Committee on Employment and Social Affairs Ordinary meeting

2 June 2026

Contents updated on 2 Jun 2026

La présidente ouvre l’audition sur le cadre stratégique européen post‑2027 en santé et sécurité au travail puis donne la parole aux représentants de l’ETUC, de BusinessEurope, de la Commission (DG EMPL), d’EU‑OSHA, de l’OIT et de l’ETUI, qui dressent le bilan du cadre 2021‑2027 et exposent leurs priorités pour le prochain cadre (directive‑cadre, risques psychosociaux, TMS, données, climat, IA, travailleurs invisibles, Vision Zero, articulation avec le Quality Jobs Act).

05:03 - 07:22

Speaker 2

Okay, colleagues. The next item on our agenda is the public hearing on a new EU strategic framework on health and safety at work post-2027. In its quality jobs roadmap, the Commission has announced that by mid-2026, it will report with regards to the implementation of the OSH framework directive and related directives, and that it will also review the workplace and display screen equipment directives to better address OSH-related risks. Currently, also the carcinogens, mutagens and reprotoxic substances directive is undergoing its sixth revision, as we heard this morning. With regard to the current EU strategic framework on health and safety at work 2021-2027, the European Parliament adopted on 10th of March 2022 a resolution and over the years has regularly called on the Commission to further raise the bar in respect of the EU strategic framework and the need to update it in the light of the latest technological developments, emerging occupational risks, changes in work patterns, and lessons learned from health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The EMPL committee repeatedly stressed the need for implementation of the Vision Zero approach to work-related accidents and diseases, and invited the Commission to raise its level of ambition and to increase its focus on prevention strategies in order to strive for the highest level of health and safety protection at work possible. For today's hearing, we have invited a number of experts, relevant stakeholders and social partners in order to take stock of the implementation of the current EU OSH framework and its impact, and to look ahead and discuss necessary updates and improvements to the next strategic framework in line with the evolution of labor markets and in the context of the twin digital and green transitions. For the stocktaking and lessons learned part, I would like to now give the floor to our first speaker, Ignacio Doreste Hernández, senior advisor at the ETUC. You have the floor for seven minutes.

07:20 - 14:25

Speaker 1

Thank you very much, dear chair. Thank you very much to the European Parliament for the invite to the European Trade Union Confederation to this important event. I wanted to share with you the assessment of my organization over the incumbent strategic framework. We were deeply engaged in the preparation of this and previous strategic frameworks on occupational safety and health, so this one was welcomed. Many of the demands of the European trade union movement were integrated in the strategic framework.

Something which is particularly relevant is that the European Commission took into consideration the very good opinion which was reached by consensus in the Advisory Committee on Safety and Health, where employers, trade unions, and governments are represented in equal footing. As I said, many of the elements of the strategic framework are aligned with the proposal that we had put forth. Some of the elements that we consider that could have been improved were, for example, the fact that it is a strategic framework and not a strategy. We understood that a strategy at European level has more political weight, particularly when it comes to the assessment and the follow-up and the role of the European Parliament in this process. We believe that the current strategic framework has been, particularly in the first years of its implementation, a driver of political change at a national level with the deployment of national strategies across all member states following the basis of the European strategic framework.

Something which has been mentioned by the chair, the Vision Zero approach, is something highly welcomed by the European trade union movement. The strategic framework refers to a Vision Zero on occupational accidents. We understand that this should be enlarged in its scope to also occupational diseases. When it comes to the protection of workers against hazardous chemical products, we believe that the strategic framework has been a driver of legislative change with many revisions of the directive on carcinogens, mutagens, and reprotoxic substances. And here the European Parliament has played a key role in improving the good proposal published by the European Commission.

Perhaps the most, one of the most disappointed elements of the strategic framework in the light of my organization is the actions put forth when it comes to tackle psychosocial risk and musculoskeletal disorders. Here the European Commission has done a very good assessment of the scale of the problem. However, the strategic framework, when it comes to undertake actions in order to cope with those, is not ambitious enough according to our understanding. The strategic framework is talking about guidelines and other forms of soft law in order to solve this problem. And we believe that this is not enough.

It is high time to undertake legislative action with clear obligations for employers in order to prevent the workers from the exposure to this risk. Then on enforcement, the strategic framework included very strong language when it comes to the recommendation of member states according to the ILO recommendation on labor inspectorates, on the ratio of labor inspectors per number of workers. However, it fell short when it comes to the binding element of this recommendation.

So we were expecting concrete action on that. We understand that the European competences on enforcement can be limited, but perhaps by providing the Advisory Committee on Safety and Health an enhanced advisory role on how to to enhance the labor inspectorate, this could be partially improved. Then looking ahead, since this hearing is meant to to serve for the upcoming strategic framework, which is going to to expand as from 2028, we believe that it should tackle ambitiously psychosocial risk and musculoskeletal disorders. The same applying to the exposure of workers against extreme weather events. There is also a need, I mean, there is very good narrative in the strategic framework when it comes to to gender and this should be maintained in the new one, we believe.

So there is a need to have a gender-sensitive but ambitious approach with a strong focus on eradicating gender-based violence and harassment, any kind of gender-based violence, so also including digital harassment and other forms of violence against women workers. Then it is important that the strategic framework provides for closing the gaps on the scope of the current legislative acquis on occupational safety and health, by which, for example, according to, if I'm not mistaken, Article 2 of the personal scope, domestic workers are excluded from the scope of application of the framework directive and therefore all the daughters' directive which deploy from from it. It is very important that there is a strong narrative on enforcement, as was previously said. It is not only about the number of labor inspectors, but also the the power and the independence that the labor inspector should have in order to undertake deterrent investigations at at company level. And I wanted to conclude by saying that we hope that by the time that we have a new strategic framework, the European Commission together with the co-legislator had already finished the the work of the Quality Jobs Act, where we expect that there is going to be strong legislative provisions on occupational safety and health issues, and therefore the strategic framework is going to be a political tool in order to set into motion the legislative elements of the Quality Jobs Act on this topic.

Thank you very much.

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