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| Stefano Boy works as a research officer at the Safety Bureau of the European Trade Union Confederation (TUTB). Prior to this he had ten years experience in accident prevention and investigation across Europe and overseas. He also supported safety engineering research in various academic bodies. He is an expert in Community work on machinery safety and organises the network of trade union experts on technical standardisation. In this article he gives details of the TUTB's monitoring of the 12-year old EU Machinery Directive and involvement in its revision. |
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TUTB attaches great importance to the identification of issues affecting the health and safety of workers. In particular, TUTB is well aware of the still high rates of accidents and injuries caused by machinery in many European countries. The 1999 European Union labour force survey identifies craftsmen, machine operators, and installation and assembly workers as particularly high-risk groups. These groups of workers use the large majority of work equipment covered by the Machinery Directive, the "New Approach" regulation aimed at eliminating technical barriers to trade between the Member States, and ensuring a high level of health and safety. In fact, the Machinery Directive sets machinery design requirements to protect the health and safety of users, while suggested technical ways of fulfilling these requirements are detailed separately in European harmonised standards.
The Machinery Directive enables manufacturers of 95% of all machines sold in Europe to declare - without the intervention of a third party - the compliance of their product with the relevant requirements. Therefore, the health and safety of millions of machinery operators depends to a large extent on the manufacturers' sense of responsibility. In this context, the formulation of essential safety requirements, their explanations in technical standards, and their implementation at the workplace, represent the three pillars which European machinery safety is based on.
Machinery Directive
In 2002 TUTB has being working on those elements by carrying out many initiatives: a European survey on the implementation of the Machinery Directive, an active participation in the revision of a basic machinery safety standard, and finally the running of a project on participatory strategies for work equipment design. The TUTB has recently undertaken a research project on the application of the Machinery Directive in selected Member States - Italy, Germany, France and Finland - to identify what if any difficulties those affected by the regulation are coming up against.
These Member States agreed to focus on one class of work equipment to have consistent data on which to base the analysis of the different national systems. Woodworking machinery was chosen for the significant risk associated with rotating devices, cutting and shearing blades, and meshing gears. Many of these machines are listed in Annex IV of the Directive, and so must be certified by a notified body. This study aims to engage with the debate on how to balance high safety standards with free trade between Member States. It provides feedback on the experiences of the participants in regulation with 'safety by design': as the ones most immediately affected by the application of the Machinery Directive, they can tell us if and where the provisions are falling down.
Comparing different national situations is a highly instructive exercise. Historically, each country has developed its own specific administrative set-up, which is locked into the national machine safety culture. Not only do the various stakeholders (manufacturers, public authorities, notified bodies, etc.) play their own particular role, they have also developed specific linkages with one another. This means that the different approaches taken can be pulled together so as to identify what strategies need deploying at European level to address the issues found. In the TUTB's view, the study should also help inform the rolling debates on reforming the Directive. Groundwork on revising this piece of Community legislation has been ongoing in various areas for several years.
Harmonised Standards
This second activity was intended to monitor the revision of the basic technical standard for the safety of machinery under scrutiny by the special group set up within CEN (the European Committee for Standardisation). This key document was drawn up under a mandate handed to CEN by the European Commission and supports the essential health and safety requirements for the design and construction of machinery and safety components, introduced in Annex I of the Machinery Directive. TUTB actively participated in the meetings intended to move the standard on towards the publication in the Official Journal of the European Communities.
The TUTB and SALTSA ( a Swedish trade union research group) are currently running a project on 'Trade Unions Strategies for Improving Mandated European Technical Standards' which will conclude in June 2003. One of the project's topics is research into new participatory strategies: TUTB experience in this area also includes the project carried out in 1999 in Tuscany, Italy, where workers and firms were involved in assessing the effectiveness of technical standards on the safety of woodworking machinery. The case studies on participatory design of work equipment will be included in national reports that will be discussed in a workshop held in Brussels in June 2002.
The scheme recently instituted to allow young people to gain work training in foreign Member States has been a big success. Over 20,000 'Europasses' have been issued for courses of between 3 and 15 weeks and most have gone to people younger than 23. They have had the chance to improve their employment prospects and raise the quality and attractiveness of vocational education. Over half of the documents has been issued in Germany with a further quarter in France and the U.K. The favourite country in which to do the training is overwhelmingly the U.K., ahead of Spain, Germany and France. Each country has a co-ordinating organisation to handle applications, please see the box below for the UK web site.
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