Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:2007:30
Date: 2007-01-18
Language of the case: English
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Social Policy
Procedure: Action for failure to fulfil obligations - unfounded
Origin: United Kingdom

Summary of the Judgment Social policy – Protection of the safety and health of workers – Directive 89/391 on the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers at work (Council Directive 89/391, Arts 5(1) and (4), and 6 to 12) The Commission has not established to the requisite legal standard that, in qualifying the duty on employers to ensure the safety and health of workers in every aspect related to the work by limiting that duty to what is reasonably practicable, the United Kingdom has failed to fulfil its obligations under Article 5(1) and (4) of Directive 89/391 on the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers at work. As regards the scope of the employer’s liability for the consequences of any event detrimental to workers’ health and safety, Article 5(1) of Directive 89/391 places the employer under a duty to ensure that workers have a safe working environment, the meaning of which is specified in Articles 6 to 12 of Directive 89/391 and by various individual directives which lay down the preventive measures to be adopted in certain specific industrial sectors. That provision simply embodies the general duty of safety to which the employer is subject, without specifying any form of liability and in particular no-fault liability. The first subparagraph of Article 5(4) of Directive 89/391, which allows Member States the option of limiting employers’ responsibility ‘where occurrences are due to unusual and unforeseeable circumstances, beyond the employers’ control, or to exceptional events, the consequences of which could not have been avoided despite the exercise of all due care’, is intended to clarify the scope of certain provisions of Directive 89/391 by explaining the margin of manoeuvre available to the Member States in transposing those provisions into national law. On the other hand, it cannot be inferred from that provision, on the basis of an interpretation a contrario, that the Community legislature intended to impose upon Member States a duty to prescribe a no-fault liability regime for employers. (see paras 41-42, 48-49, 58)