Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, point 4 of the Community health and safety strategy 2002-2006 which we have just debated calls for an extension to the scope of framework Directive 89/391/EEC – groups of workers excluded – and amongst other types of work it names that carried out by the self-employed. The recommendation I am presenting and which we are debating in the European Parliament asks that the health and safety at work protection offered to salaried workers be extended to self-employed or independent workers. Our thinking is based on the fact that workers who carry out their professional activity outside a working relationship with an employer or company are not generally protected by the Community directives relating to health and safety at work. In fact only three directives refer to them, sometimes, tangentially – specifically Council Directive 92/57/EEC on the implementation of minimum safety and health requirements at temporary or mobile construction sites – and take account of self-employed workers carrying out their activities insofar as they may constitute a potential source of risk for salaried workers at those sites as a result of their activities. In other words, risks caused by the self-employed worker which they are not protected from. Council Directive 92/29/EEC on the minimum safety and health requirements for improved medical treatment on board vessels does not fall specifically under Directive 89/391 and what I have said about Directive 92/57 also applies to it. And the most recent Directive, Directive 2001/45/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 June 2001 amending Council Directive 89/655/EEC concerning the minimum safety and health requirements for the use of work equipment by workers at work, refers in one of its recitals to self-employed workers, pointing out that when they personally use work equipment they may put the health and safety of employed workers at risk, as if the self-employed worker were considered a risk factor not deserving of protection from the same risks, as if they were not considered truly a worker. A large majority of Member States do not provide legal health and safety protection for self-employed workers, and there is great diversity and heterogeneity between levels of protection. Measures and decisions to combat the conversion of risk into accidents have traditionally appeared linked to the concept of the employed worker, perhaps because the independent self-employed worker should take responsibility for their own health and safety, a reasoning which is insufficient and unjustified. It therefore seems that action at Community level is required, in order to ensure a minimum degree of protection for self-employed workers against professional risks, because, as well as the self-employed worker isolated in a workplace with one or more self-employed workers, the development of the employment structure, when companies are subcontracting work to micro-companies or self-employed workers, gives rise to new work safety problems: the safety of self-employed workers and that of employed or self-employed workers who work alongside them. All workers deserve protection. Self-employed workers seem to be subject to the same risks as dependent workers, but their deficient training and information may also be the cause of accidents and injuries for them and for other employed workers. Ladies and gentlemen, we are faced with a broader problem, that of the organisation of work characterised by the use of workers provided by temporary work agencies, the dividing up of the productive process, allocating it to contractors, subcontractors and self-employed workers and externalised and decentralised production methods in general. In my opinion, and I believe this is shared by everybody, the work safety protection of workers cannot depend on the legal status of each worker exposed to risks, whether they be independent, dependent or salaried. The Charter of Fundamental Rights does not make this distinction. Every worker has the right to work in conditions that respect their health, safety and dignity, according to the Charter. Where the law makes no distinction, neither must we. The procedure for application is a recommendation which must facilitate the process, the objective of which is clear; the obligatory application to independent or self-employed workers of the same rules which are applicable to salaried workers. It is clear that the culture of prevention takes on more significance here. In many cases, the self-employed workers themselves, who are the main beneficiaries, will have to invest in protection measures, and in others they will have to acquire their own information and training. Without getting into issues such as those relating to liabilities in certain types of accident, I believe that the constant and determined fight against accidents now has a new factor within the collective landscape: that offered by a culture of prevention in which the protagonists are the workers and the authorities themselves.

Political group: PPE-DE