Mr President, while my report welcomes the Commission's communication, it is also constructively critical in a number of important respects. The report emphasises three horizontal issues of great importance to the success of the strategy. First, the lack of an action plan. The strategy suffers from an unacceptable imbalance and a lack of strategic vision for follow-through. The initial analysis is basically good but the proposals for action are often little more than a description of an issue. Where they propose action, they are often vague, and there is virtually no indication of resources or the timing of the strategy's implementation. For example, the communication presents a good analysis of the changes being brought about by the increasing feminisation of society and the impact of an ageing population, but then proposes virtually nothing by way of action. The report therefore calls for an action plan with timing commitments against each major proposal, for such a plan to be endorsed by Parliament's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs in time for the spring 2003 European Council and for it then to be subject to annual monitoring through the Social Agenda scoreboard, as advocated by the Council. Parliament and the advisory committees would also need to be involved in this monitoring process. This is a serious point and I know the Commissioner will be listening to it. I call upon her to give a clear indication tonight that there will be a positive response to this call. If not, I have a clear mandate to ask for this report to be referred back to committee, where it will be reformulated to reject the Commission's strategy. The second major horizontal issue is a lack of resources. In 1992, some 130 officials were working on occupational health and safety within the European Commission. Today, that number is down to around 24. We might disagree over the precise numbers but the Commissioner would agree there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of staff working in this area. This is not a basis for the kind of dynamic and proactive administration that would be required to implement the strategy, capable of responding to a changing policy environment while continuing to monitor and scrutinise the implementation of existing legislation and policy measures. It is essential that this trend is reversed and that adequate resources are allocated to this policy area within the Commission. The third major horizontal issue in the report highlights a lack of balance between legislative and non-legislative instruments. I am concerned that the development of non-legislative instruments should in no way be seen as an alternative to maintaining and improving Community legislation on occupational health and safety. Specific instances are given where the gaps and deficiencies in the existing legal framework need to be addressed and where comprehensive approaches to legislation, rather than ad hoc tinkering, will be important for both established and new risks. Turning to the specifics of the report, there is clearly not enough time to deal with them all, so I shall highlight only a few. First, the report makes the point that, given how much more problematic health and safety are in small and medium-sized enterprises, it is regrettable that the Commission has still not launched a multiannual SME programme based on the two years' preparatory action undertaken by the Bilbao Agency on the initiative of the European Parliament. Such a programme was supported by the Commission in the European Social Agenda endorsed at Nice. It would facilitate the testing, analysis and dissemination of successful measures in this critical sector. I very much hope the Commission will respond positively now. Second, in terms of emerging risks, I hope the Commission will look at the need for new laws in areas such as harassment at work, recently called for by Parliament. Equally, in relation to repetitive strain injuries, I hope it will revisit the display screen directive – the directive does not even mention the computer mouse – and the directive on manual handling. I hope it will go further and accept our call for a comprehensive directive on workplace ergonomics. The report also highlights a number of existing directives that are in need of revision. The Commission needs both commitment and resources to tackle that work. Reflecting the helpful opinion we received from the Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities, the report advocates the integration of a gender dimension throughout the strategy and highlights a number of specific strands of work to be tackled. The report also welcomes benchmarking, but it takes the view that a successful benchmarking approach will need not just more comparable and reliable data but also a harmonised system of definitions, recording and reporting of occupational injuries and diseases. My final point is that the report also welcomes the proposal to codify and simplify existing Community legislation in this field, so long as that is not coded language for deregulation for deregulation's sake. I am not accusing the Employment and Social Affairs Directorate-General of that, but there are forces elsewhere in the Commission that have that tendency. In committee I even went as far as to propose a joint amendment with Mr Bushill-Matthews saying that the review of the legislation should be used as an opportunity to promote the simplification of legislation and its repeal when it is redundant. None of us here should have an interest in maintaining redundant legislation, nor in making legislation complicated rather than as easy as possible to understand and implement. I hope the Commissioner can give us the assurance we need on this action plan.

Political group: PSE