WRITTEN QUESTION E-1453/01 by Alexandros Alavanos (GUE/NGL) to the Commission. Record of industrial accidents and occupational diseases.
Date: 2001-05-17
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: EU statistics, Greece, census, employment statistics, occupational accident, occupational disease, statistical method

11.12.2001

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Official Journal of the European Communities

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they had to acknowledge that they were unable to reach an agreement. In accordance with Article 138
(ex Article 118a) of the EC Treaty, the Commission could make use of its power of initiative and submit
a proposal for a Directive on working conditions for temporary workers to the European Parliament and
the Council in the next few months.

(1) Amended proposal for a Council Directive concerning the supply of workers by temporary employment businesses

and fixed-duration contracts of employment (OJ C 133, 21.5.1984).

(2) Council Directive 91/383/EEC of 25 June 1991 supplementing the measures to encourage improvements in the
safety and health at work of workers with a fixed-duration employment relationship or a temporary employment
relationship (OJ L 206, 29.7.1991).

(3) Council Directive 97/81/EC of 15 December 1997 concerning the Framework Agreement on part-time work

concluded by UNICE (OJ C 14, 20.1.1998).

(4) Council Directive 1999/70/EC of 28 June 1999 concerning the framework agreement on fixed-term work

concluded by ETUC, UNICE and CEEP (OJ L 175, 10.7.1999).

(2001/C 350 E/171)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1453/01

by Alexandros Alavanos (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

Subject: Record of industrial accidents and occupational diseases

(17 May 2001)

Despite the fact that funding has been provided under the second Community Support Framework, Greece
is the only country in the European Union which does not have a reliable system of recording industrial
accidents and occupational diseases, making it extremely difficult for the government to intervene on
health and safety issues. At the present time, industrial accidents and occupational diseases are recorded by
only one social security agency, the IKA (Social Security Institution), and only in respect of its own
contributors who total some 45 % of the labour force. Moreover, there are no records of occupational
diseases.

What steps will the Commission take, in co-operation with the competent Greek authorities, to enable
Greece to acquire a reliable system of recording industrial accidents and occupational diseases?

Answer given by Mr Solbes Mira on behalf of the Commission

(24 July 2001)

The Commission shares the Honourable Member(cid:146)s concern about the need for reliable recording of
industrial accidents and occupational diseases in the Community.

Since 1990, the Commission, the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat) and the
Employment and Social Affairs Directorate-General, have been working together with the Member States
under a (cid:145)gentlemen(cid:146)s agreement(cid:146) on the harmonisation of European Statistics on Accidents at Work (ESAW
Project) (1) and European Occupational Diseases Statistics (EODS Project) (2). The aim of this work is to
harmonise the criteria and methodologies to be used for recording data on industrial accidents and
occupational diseases.

Under Article 9(1)(c) and (d) of the framework Directive (89/391/EEC (3)), the employer must (cid:145)keep a list of
occupational accidents resulting in a worker being unfit for work for more than three working days(cid:146) and
(cid:145)draw up, for the responsible authorities and in accordance with national laws and/or practices, reports on
occupational accidents suffered by his workers(cid:146). ESAW data (accidents involving the loss of more than
three days(cid:146) work or fatal accidents) are currently available for the period 1993-1998 and include
information on the economic activity and size of the business, the age, sex, nationality, occupation and
employment status of the victim, the nature of the injury and the part of the body concerned, the
geographical location, the date and time of the accident and the consequences of the accident, i.e. number
of days lost, permanent incapacity or death. A final set of variables permitting the identification and
investigation of the causes of industrial accidents and the circumstances in which they took place has now

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been introduced with a view to promoting an active policy for the prevention of industrial accidents at
European level (Phase III). Phase III data will gradually become available for the reference years 2001 to
2004.

Under the EODS project, work has started on the basis of a pilot project on cases recognised in 1995
involving 31 items
in the schedule of occupational diseases drawn up by the Commission in
Recommendation 90/326/EEC of 22 May 1990 (4). Taking account of the findings of this pilot project,
the methodology for an initial EODS phase developed by the FIOH (5) has just been completed.
It
comprises the following variables: Member State, age, sex, occupation on the date of exposure, economic
activity of the business on the date of exposure, medical diagnosis, causal agent, product containing the
causal agent (if chemical or biological), seriousness (temporary or permanent incapacity) and the year in
which the first case was recognised and the seriousness of the case in question. Phase I of data collection
for the EODS project will begin in 2001 and will concern the cases of occupational disease recognised for
the first time and all deaths resulting from an occupational disease during the year.

As for the situation in Greece, a distinction must be made between statistics on industrial accidents and
statistics on occupational diseases.

In the case of industrial accidents, in the field covered by the IKA (6) the data are collected and are available
at national level. They are also sent to Eurostat in accordance with the ESAW methodology and included
in the European data. The IKA, the Ministry of Labour and the national statistical institute collaborate on
the coding and forwarding of the ESAW data and on preparing the implementation of Phase III in Greece.
Two problems are still unsolved but they are duly taken into account and corrected under the ESAW
methodology. In the field covered by the IKA, only some of the industrial accidents resulting in the loss of
more than three working days are declared. According to the IKA, 39 % of accidents are declared. This is
comparable to the level in Denmark, Ireland or the United Kingdom (46 %, 38 % and 43 % respectively).
For all the Member States in this situation, Eurostat corrects the number of accidents declared on the basis
of the declaration rate so as to estimate the actual number of accidents (100 %). The latter figures are used
in publications and for calculating the accident rate (number of accidents per 100 000 persons in
employment). On the other hand, as the Honourable Member points out, only the data in the IKA field,
covering around 45 % of persons employed in Greece, are included. The IKA field corresponds to paid
workers in the private sector, which also is the population covered by the ESAW data of many other
Member States (Belgium and France in particular only strictly cover that field). However, it is Greece(cid:146)s
peculiarities in terms of the employment status of the workforce that lead to only 45 % of workers being
covered, since in Greece in 1999 employers, self-employed persons and family workers accounted for
43,4 % of the total number of persons with a job, compared with an average of 16,2 % in the Community
as a whole (source: Community Labour Force Survey, Eurostat). However, in order to calculate the accident
rate, Eurostat relates the number of accidents to the number of workers actually covered by the ESAW
data.

As regards occupational diseases, while the European schedule does not present any major problems in the
case of Greece, the national procedure for recognising occupational diseases is cumbersome in that country
and probably not all cases are recorded. The data sent to Eurostat in connection with the EODS pilot
collection of data on occupational diseases recognised in 1995 were very limited (92 cases out of a total of
more than 57 000 for Europe as a whole). In its final evaluation report on these data, the FIOH (7) noted in
particular that the data for Greece did not represent the total workforce, that data on the coverage of the
national systems were not available for Greece, and that Greece had therefore often had to be excluded
from the analysis. Eurostat has, however, been informed that a working party comprising representatives
of the IKA and other institutions concerned has been set up by the Ministry of Labour to examine possible
ways of improving the data on occupational disease in Greece. The Commission helps the Member States
and Greece in particular in this process of improvement by disseminating, through its working parties and
publications, the EODS methodology (8) and the good practices applied in other Member States.

(1) ESAW: European Statistics of Accidents at Work.
(2) EODS: European Occupational Diseases Statistics.
(3) Council Directive 89/391/EEC of 12 June 1989 on the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the

safety and health of workers at work (OJ L 183, 29.6.1989).

(4) 90/326/EEC: Commission Recommendation of 22 May 1990 to the Member States concerning the adoption of

a European schedule of occupational diseases (OJ L 160, 26.6.1990).
FIOH: Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.
IKA: Greek Social Security Institution (cid:129) occupational accidents and diseases (cid:129) private sector employees.

(5)
(6)
(7) Eurostat Working Paper, Population and social conditions 3/1999/E/No 2.
(8) Eurostat Working Paper, Population and social conditions 3/2000/E/Nos 18 and 19.