Ann occup. Hyg.. Vol. 36, No. 6, pp. 675-6SO, 1992. Printed in Great Britain
0003^*878/92 $5 00+0.00 Pergimon P r o s Ltd British Occupational Hygiene Society.
SHORT COMMUNICATION THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY PROGRAMME ON HEALTH AND HYGIENE AT WORK* R. HAIGH Industrial Medicine and Hygiene Unit, Health and Safety Directorate, Directorate-General Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs, Commission of the European Communities, Batiment Jean Monnet, L-2920 Luxembourg (Received 2 July 1992 and in final form 28 July 1992)
THE last few years has been a period of considerable activity on health at work in the European Community and this paper presents some of the results and a few personal ideas on this work; on the issues and problems which we face; and on where we might be going in the future. The paper first outlines the legal and political basis of this work and the current year's work programme on industrial medicine and hygiene and then addresses some issues that are important if the future work is to contribute to national initiatives and endeavours. Two distinct periods for Community action are discernible, that beginning around the mid-1970s, before the Single Act of 1987, and that after this Act. Perhaps the key to these changes was the adoption in 1987 of Article 118A in the Treaty regulating the activities of the Community. Article 118A gives extra emphasis to the role of the Community in matters concerned with the health and safety of workers (Fig. 1) and, as can be seen from the second and third clauses, ensures that such action takes into account the needs of smaller undertakings, whose will-being is vital to the economy and social structure of the Community. It also gives Member States the right to go further than the minimum standards set by the Community and is aimed at preventing those Member States who already have higher standards from back-sliding (e.g. by relaxing requirements where they are already more stringent than Community limit values). Linked to the question of minimum standards and Community action is the notion of subsidiarity, on which the President of the Commission, Mr Delors, has made a definitive policy statement. In essence the policy is that the Community should act only where it is necessary to do so to achieve equality of action, leaving points of technical detail or local needs to be taken into account by individual Member States, or putting it another way, only when there would be a net added value, should Community measures be undertaken. Likewise, social questions, such as worker protection, cannot be separated from the creation of the Internal Market. An important reference point of this social dimension is the Social Charter which, whilst not being binding, is nevertheless an indication of the intention of the Commission to address social rights. •Presented at the BOHS Annual Conference, Edinburgh, April 1992. 675
676
Short Communication
Article 118 A of the EEC Treaty
1. Member States shall pay particular attention to encouraging improvements, especially in the working environment, as regards the health and safety of workers, and shall set as their objective the harmonisation of conditions in this area, while maintaining the improvements made.
2. In order to help achieve the objective laid down in the first paragraph, the Council, acting by a qualified majority on a proposal from the Commission, in co-operation with the European Parliament and after consulting the Economic and Social Committee, shall adopt, by means of directives, minimum requirements for gradual implementation, having regard to the conditions and technical rules obtaining in each of the Member States.
Such directives shall avoid imposing administrative, financial and legal constraints in a way which would hold back the creation and development of small/medium sized undertakings.
3. The provisions adopted pursuant to this Article shall not prevent any Member States from maintaining or introducing more stringent measures for the protection of working conditions compatible with this Treaty.
FIG.
I.
This link between the Internal Market and the social dimension also raises the question of the Commission policy on reference to standards, and particularly to CEN standards, in developing the policies based on harmonization under Article 100A of the Treaty. This year sees the "Year of Health, Hygiene and Safety Protection at Work" and the Commission hopes it will be a success. It is fitting that this conference should make the link between the work of the Society and that of'1992'. But it is doubtful that the idea of having this special 'Year' would have been considered had it not been for the initiatives stemming from Article 118A, which resulted in Directive 89/391/EEC "on measures to encourage improvements in the health and safety of workers at work" and in the individual Directives adopted under it. Of particular relevance to occupational hygiene are the individual Directives on personal protective equipment, (89/656/EEC), biological agents (90/679/EEC) and carcinogens (90/394/EEC). These are all adopted
Short Communication
677
under Article 118A as minimum standards. The other Directive to be mentioned in this context is that establishing indicative limit values (91/322/EEC) drawn up on the basis of the 1980 Directive on chemical, physical and biological agents about which more is said later. To build on this framework, the major legislative work this year on health and hygiene is concerned with updating that part of the 1980 Directive concerned with chemicals, consolidating it with the existing Directives on lead and prohibitions to form a new text dealing more comprehensively with the context of risks from chemicals at the workplace. The text will bring into line the pre-Article 118A Directives with the Framework Directive 89/391/EEC and establish minimum standards applicable throughout the Community. In structure the basic document on which we are working has many elements in common with the COSHH Regulations in U.K. and the equivalent German legislation. A workplace assessment by the employer forms the basis of subsequent precautionary measures. However although we are appreciative of the way U.K. Government experts have played a most constructive role, there is a consensus emerging which places a greater responsibility on the authorities than there seems to be in the case of the U.K. COSHH regulations. A much more solid base of Community exposure limit values is required to create a 'credible mass' which will ensure that the Community is taken seriously on this issue internationally. A second Directive establishing limit values under Directive 80/1107/EEC should be well advanced, if not adopted, by the end of the year. The Commission is also considering some modification of the Carcinogens Directive—in particular the sensitive issue of establishing the first limit value under this Directive for benzene. The other main item on the 1992 programme is the classification, at a European level, of pathogenic micro-organisms under the Directive on Biological Agents, which is at an advanced stage and should be completed this year. Legislative requirements concerning the provision of information to workers also need to be developed coherently. Work is in hand to see how best to do this. Not all work is legislative. The Community has, since 1962, issued Recommendations on a schedule of occupational diseases to foster greater convergence in the recognition and compensation of occupational diseases throughout the Community. The last update was issued in 1990 and we are now well advanced in the preparation of guidelines on the criteria for the clinical recognition of the scheduled diseases. Apart from benefits to those effected, the information will provide a background to better statistics on occupational diseases to guide future priorities. The combined thrust of the newer legislation is towards a safer and healthier workplace where the employer and worker are encouraged to solve problems together, the role of the legislator being to encourage rather than to dictate. Taking this approach to the assessment of the workplace, specialists in the technological consequences of action taken for medical reasons must sometimes be consulted. How are prevention and reduction of risk, replacement of processes, and measurement techniques to be addressed? If not by the legislator, who may set only the principles, then it must be the employer who must put them into practice. Such specialists, be they called hygienists or not, must advise in a concerted way throughout Europe. One national professional body, one European group or one international association is more effective than disparate unco-ordinated soundings of individual experts. In this context, the initiative taken by WHO on training for occupational health and hygiene
678
Short Communication
professionals is welcome. This is an issue which is exercising minds in the U.K. also and will be important for the future as the 'competent person' concept is used more extensively in legislation. It is imperative to ensure a practical approach and to make sure that the needs of the employer are paramount. It is not 'who does the work' that is important, only that the person who takes measurements, and thereafter the decisions, has the necessary skill and understanding to do so. An area of particular relevance to hygiene, on which we have to clarify our thinking, concerns the relationship between CEN Standards (e.g. measurement of pollutants) and Community Directives. There is a clear role for CEN but also a view that standards do not sit easily alongside minimum requirements. The distinction between the role of CEN, as part of the legislative process introducing technical explanations of principles included in Directives leading to harmonization under Article 100A, and the role of CEN as a technical standards body which may optionally be used by the Commission in other areas, has to be maintained. Certainly the Commission cannot equal the technical input that goes into CEN and must improve the mechanism to tap this scientific or technical resource effectively, for the benefit of all. The role of the Commission's Directorate-General on Research (including both BCR and the EEC Research Programmes and Institutes) is to help in ensuring that the hygiene measurements, on which assessments are made and precautions established, are reliable. Otherwise the whole effort is negated. The Community looks for a very positive input to its work in future from professional groups, and from societies such as The BOHS and its sister bodies. There should be an increasing role to be played as the legislative framework is completed and attention turns more to ensuring its effectiveness in application at the workplace. The obligation to replace the dangerous by the less dangerous is a concept central to the general framework Directive of 1989 and its predecessor of 1980 concerned more with health and hygiene. If the specialist, the legislator, and the politician are to be able to improve conditions leading to upward harmonization over a period of time, there must be a yardstick, which is the occupational exposure level—the 'limit value'. The most striking feature in early national lists of limit values is the similarity between their figures and those of the ACGIH. Not surprisingly the European legislator drew on the experience of their transatlantic contemporaries with their ideas and resources. The way in which European Governments now attach considerably more importance to carrying out their own detailed assessments is also striking. Most governments rely on a first-stage 'health-based' limit value which is adjusted for what might loosely be called socio-economic reasons or reasons of technological feasibility. The Community legislator must also consider not only health criteria but other factors as well. Both the Council and the Commission have explicitly stated that in adopting limit values the Advisory Committee on Safety, Health and Hygiene Protection at Work would be consulted. The Committee's role is to introduce the socio-economic element, recognising the limitation of the concept of 'health-based' limit values within a legislative framework which must, by definition, contain a component of economic and technical feasibility and political acceptance. It is in this area of technological adjustment that national concepts begin to interfere with a smooth transition from the nationally approved health-based limit to the figures found in legislation, and finally to the debate at Community level on a
Short Communication
679
suitable EEC figure. It is at this stage also that tripartite consultation takes place and that the limit value begins to take on the role of a stone-inscribed biblical commandment prophesying doom should it be exceeded. There is no scientific justification for such precision. If one considers that at most a few hundred substances are provided with all the data that the scientific advisers would require and that even for these the quality of the data is variable (hence the almost arbitrary use of safety or uncertainty factors), one has to accept that the figure quite properly incorporates a considerable amount of scientific judgement. Where the database is limited the appreciation of the risk relies even more on the judgement of the scientist involved in the assessment. For several hundred more of the most commonly used chemicals the toxicological information is at best fragmentary. Finally, there is also a considerable number of substances to which exposure commonly occurs in the workplace but for which no limits exist. Under these circumstances the employer might be forgiven for asking further guidance on his responsibilities. Scientific certainty, however laudable, can be the enemy of progress in achieving limits for the multitude of chemicals, and mixtures of chemicals, to which workers are exposed. Fewer than 1000 of the 100000 chemicals in the EINECS list have been assessed and assigned limit values in one or another of the Member States of Europe. Many of the so-called 1000 'High Production Volume Chemicals' have as yet no limit value and there are no data relating to them on which a limit could be based. The Community should address this issue, so that employers have guidelines to work to when making their assessments: the best current wisdom, even if not fully validated scientifically, is better than no guidance. Thus, one could envisage a Community list of limit values—even provisional ones—produced in a short period, and the Commission services are seeking a mechanism which would enable practical use to be made of data collected by the Community for a variety of purposes (e.g. 7th Amendment to the Dangerous Substances Directive, pesticide authorization, etc.). It would be far more useful to give guidance on many chemicals rather than concentrating on perfection for a few. What is the scientific basis for trying to justify a limit value 10% different from that adopted in another State? Would not the worker be better protected by a broader spectrum of limits in a scheme which would assess a substance approximately on the basis of a minimum of data—perhaps genotoxicity in short-term tests, irritation, comparison with LD 5O S or other pragmatic, simple means of getting at least an appreciation of areas of concern for chemicals for which no other data were available? The assessment could then be coupled with calculations of exposure—on the basis of whatever theoretical, mathematical or practical information was available—to enable the employer to judge what might be in his case the most effective protective measures to take. In the next year or so, it might be expected that chemicals will be considered in three groups for which the datasets vary considerably: —those for which a full up-to-date evaluation has been possible on modern scientific and technical data; —those for which ad hoc judgements have to be made but which nevertheless are based on extensive scientific and technical data; —and those for which limited data together with calculated estimations are the source of'administrative' figures.
680
Short Communication
Clearly the legal consequences of this approach would be different for the three groups and the figures derived on the basis of these different approaches would have different degrees of scientific certainty. Finally and as an extension of my concerns about limit values, I believe that Community provisions that call for the employer to carry out an assessment of his workplace have to be backed by some form of guidance so that everybody is working to an agreed set of rules. The employer's assessment is not simply a risk assessment of agents on his site but a coherent appreciation of the risks from that site. Without guidance, however well Member States transpose the legal text, the practical effect will be far from the convergence of minimum standards, and thus actions to resolve the issue will be required. Something could and should be initiated to avoid this situation, without in any way trespassing on Member States rights under the concepts of'subsidiarity'. In conclusion, one must return to this role of the Commission not only as a legislator but also as a catalyst for other activities. 1992 is showing how the Community can work together outside legislation. The near future will bring a new Scientific Agency for Health and Safety at the Workplace and the lessons of 1992, the Agency, and the initiatives by the Commission should encourage a healthier and safer workplace in the Community. After all, this is the fundamental aim of the 'Year' and the Community.
DISCUSSION Replies to Mr A. Woolley and Dr C. H. B. Binns: The Commission does not expect to set up a supranational inspection service relating to health and safety legislation in the workplace. In legal terms, with the exception of certain specially regulated areas, enforcement oflegislation is left to national governments as there is no provision in the Treaty mandating the Commission to do otherwise. Nevertheless, the Commission is responsible for the correct transposition of Community law into national legislation and through this role can exert influence on Member States and may even take a Member State to the European Court. In addition to this legislative role, the Commission services responsible for workpace health and safety legislation hold regular informal meetings with inspectorates, organize training courses for inspectors and promote exchange of inspectors to provide experience in other Member States. This non-legislative training is proving successful in encouraging uniform enforcement.
0003^*878/92 $5 00+0.00 Pergimon P r o s Ltd British Occupational Hygiene Society.
SHORT COMMUNICATION THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY PROGRAMME ON HEALTH AND HYGIENE AT WORK* R. HAIGH Industrial Medicine and Hygiene Unit, Health and Safety Directorate, Directorate-General Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs, Commission of the European Communities, Batiment Jean Monnet, L-2920 Luxembourg (Received 2 July 1992 and in final form 28 July 1992)
THE last few years has been a period of considerable activity on health at work in the European Community and this paper presents some of the results and a few personal ideas on this work; on the issues and problems which we face; and on where we might be going in the future. The paper first outlines the legal and political basis of this work and the current year's work programme on industrial medicine and hygiene and then addresses some issues that are important if the future work is to contribute to national initiatives and endeavours. Two distinct periods for Community action are discernible, that beginning around the mid-1970s, before the Single Act of 1987, and that after this Act. Perhaps the key to these changes was the adoption in 1987 of Article 118A in the Treaty regulating the activities of the Community. Article 118A gives extra emphasis to the role of the Community in matters concerned with the health and safety of workers (Fig. 1) and, as can be seen from the second and third clauses, ensures that such action takes into account the needs of smaller undertakings, whose will-being is vital to the economy and social structure of the Community. It also gives Member States the right to go further than the minimum standards set by the Community and is aimed at preventing those Member States who already have higher standards from back-sliding (e.g. by relaxing requirements where they are already more stringent than Community limit values). Linked to the question of minimum standards and Community action is the notion of subsidiarity, on which the President of the Commission, Mr Delors, has made a definitive policy statement. In essence the policy is that the Community should act only where it is necessary to do so to achieve equality of action, leaving points of technical detail or local needs to be taken into account by individual Member States, or putting it another way, only when there would be a net added value, should Community measures be undertaken. Likewise, social questions, such as worker protection, cannot be separated from the creation of the Internal Market. An important reference point of this social dimension is the Social Charter which, whilst not being binding, is nevertheless an indication of the intention of the Commission to address social rights. •Presented at the BOHS Annual Conference, Edinburgh, April 1992. 675
676
Short Communication
Article 118 A of the EEC Treaty
1. Member States shall pay particular attention to encouraging improvements, especially in the working environment, as regards the health and safety of workers, and shall set as their objective the harmonisation of conditions in this area, while maintaining the improvements made.
2. In order to help achieve the objective laid down in the first paragraph, the Council, acting by a qualified majority on a proposal from the Commission, in co-operation with the European Parliament and after consulting the Economic and Social Committee, shall adopt, by means of directives, minimum requirements for gradual implementation, having regard to the conditions and technical rules obtaining in each of the Member States.
Such directives shall avoid imposing administrative, financial and legal constraints in a way which would hold back the creation and development of small/medium sized undertakings.
3. The provisions adopted pursuant to this Article shall not prevent any Member States from maintaining or introducing more stringent measures for the protection of working conditions compatible with this Treaty.
FIG.
I.
This link between the Internal Market and the social dimension also raises the question of the Commission policy on reference to standards, and particularly to CEN standards, in developing the policies based on harmonization under Article 100A of the Treaty. This year sees the "Year of Health, Hygiene and Safety Protection at Work" and the Commission hopes it will be a success. It is fitting that this conference should make the link between the work of the Society and that of'1992'. But it is doubtful that the idea of having this special 'Year' would have been considered had it not been for the initiatives stemming from Article 118A, which resulted in Directive 89/391/EEC "on measures to encourage improvements in the health and safety of workers at work" and in the individual Directives adopted under it. Of particular relevance to occupational hygiene are the individual Directives on personal protective equipment, (89/656/EEC), biological agents (90/679/EEC) and carcinogens (90/394/EEC). These are all adopted
Short Communication
677
under Article 118A as minimum standards. The other Directive to be mentioned in this context is that establishing indicative limit values (91/322/EEC) drawn up on the basis of the 1980 Directive on chemical, physical and biological agents about which more is said later. To build on this framework, the major legislative work this year on health and hygiene is concerned with updating that part of the 1980 Directive concerned with chemicals, consolidating it with the existing Directives on lead and prohibitions to form a new text dealing more comprehensively with the context of risks from chemicals at the workplace. The text will bring into line the pre-Article 118A Directives with the Framework Directive 89/391/EEC and establish minimum standards applicable throughout the Community. In structure the basic document on which we are working has many elements in common with the COSHH Regulations in U.K. and the equivalent German legislation. A workplace assessment by the employer forms the basis of subsequent precautionary measures. However although we are appreciative of the way U.K. Government experts have played a most constructive role, there is a consensus emerging which places a greater responsibility on the authorities than there seems to be in the case of the U.K. COSHH regulations. A much more solid base of Community exposure limit values is required to create a 'credible mass' which will ensure that the Community is taken seriously on this issue internationally. A second Directive establishing limit values under Directive 80/1107/EEC should be well advanced, if not adopted, by the end of the year. The Commission is also considering some modification of the Carcinogens Directive—in particular the sensitive issue of establishing the first limit value under this Directive for benzene. The other main item on the 1992 programme is the classification, at a European level, of pathogenic micro-organisms under the Directive on Biological Agents, which is at an advanced stage and should be completed this year. Legislative requirements concerning the provision of information to workers also need to be developed coherently. Work is in hand to see how best to do this. Not all work is legislative. The Community has, since 1962, issued Recommendations on a schedule of occupational diseases to foster greater convergence in the recognition and compensation of occupational diseases throughout the Community. The last update was issued in 1990 and we are now well advanced in the preparation of guidelines on the criteria for the clinical recognition of the scheduled diseases. Apart from benefits to those effected, the information will provide a background to better statistics on occupational diseases to guide future priorities. The combined thrust of the newer legislation is towards a safer and healthier workplace where the employer and worker are encouraged to solve problems together, the role of the legislator being to encourage rather than to dictate. Taking this approach to the assessment of the workplace, specialists in the technological consequences of action taken for medical reasons must sometimes be consulted. How are prevention and reduction of risk, replacement of processes, and measurement techniques to be addressed? If not by the legislator, who may set only the principles, then it must be the employer who must put them into practice. Such specialists, be they called hygienists or not, must advise in a concerted way throughout Europe. One national professional body, one European group or one international association is more effective than disparate unco-ordinated soundings of individual experts. In this context, the initiative taken by WHO on training for occupational health and hygiene
678
Short Communication
professionals is welcome. This is an issue which is exercising minds in the U.K. also and will be important for the future as the 'competent person' concept is used more extensively in legislation. It is imperative to ensure a practical approach and to make sure that the needs of the employer are paramount. It is not 'who does the work' that is important, only that the person who takes measurements, and thereafter the decisions, has the necessary skill and understanding to do so. An area of particular relevance to hygiene, on which we have to clarify our thinking, concerns the relationship between CEN Standards (e.g. measurement of pollutants) and Community Directives. There is a clear role for CEN but also a view that standards do not sit easily alongside minimum requirements. The distinction between the role of CEN, as part of the legislative process introducing technical explanations of principles included in Directives leading to harmonization under Article 100A, and the role of CEN as a technical standards body which may optionally be used by the Commission in other areas, has to be maintained. Certainly the Commission cannot equal the technical input that goes into CEN and must improve the mechanism to tap this scientific or technical resource effectively, for the benefit of all. The role of the Commission's Directorate-General on Research (including both BCR and the EEC Research Programmes and Institutes) is to help in ensuring that the hygiene measurements, on which assessments are made and precautions established, are reliable. Otherwise the whole effort is negated. The Community looks for a very positive input to its work in future from professional groups, and from societies such as The BOHS and its sister bodies. There should be an increasing role to be played as the legislative framework is completed and attention turns more to ensuring its effectiveness in application at the workplace. The obligation to replace the dangerous by the less dangerous is a concept central to the general framework Directive of 1989 and its predecessor of 1980 concerned more with health and hygiene. If the specialist, the legislator, and the politician are to be able to improve conditions leading to upward harmonization over a period of time, there must be a yardstick, which is the occupational exposure level—the 'limit value'. The most striking feature in early national lists of limit values is the similarity between their figures and those of the ACGIH. Not surprisingly the European legislator drew on the experience of their transatlantic contemporaries with their ideas and resources. The way in which European Governments now attach considerably more importance to carrying out their own detailed assessments is also striking. Most governments rely on a first-stage 'health-based' limit value which is adjusted for what might loosely be called socio-economic reasons or reasons of technological feasibility. The Community legislator must also consider not only health criteria but other factors as well. Both the Council and the Commission have explicitly stated that in adopting limit values the Advisory Committee on Safety, Health and Hygiene Protection at Work would be consulted. The Committee's role is to introduce the socio-economic element, recognising the limitation of the concept of 'health-based' limit values within a legislative framework which must, by definition, contain a component of economic and technical feasibility and political acceptance. It is in this area of technological adjustment that national concepts begin to interfere with a smooth transition from the nationally approved health-based limit to the figures found in legislation, and finally to the debate at Community level on a
Short Communication
679
suitable EEC figure. It is at this stage also that tripartite consultation takes place and that the limit value begins to take on the role of a stone-inscribed biblical commandment prophesying doom should it be exceeded. There is no scientific justification for such precision. If one considers that at most a few hundred substances are provided with all the data that the scientific advisers would require and that even for these the quality of the data is variable (hence the almost arbitrary use of safety or uncertainty factors), one has to accept that the figure quite properly incorporates a considerable amount of scientific judgement. Where the database is limited the appreciation of the risk relies even more on the judgement of the scientist involved in the assessment. For several hundred more of the most commonly used chemicals the toxicological information is at best fragmentary. Finally, there is also a considerable number of substances to which exposure commonly occurs in the workplace but for which no limits exist. Under these circumstances the employer might be forgiven for asking further guidance on his responsibilities. Scientific certainty, however laudable, can be the enemy of progress in achieving limits for the multitude of chemicals, and mixtures of chemicals, to which workers are exposed. Fewer than 1000 of the 100000 chemicals in the EINECS list have been assessed and assigned limit values in one or another of the Member States of Europe. Many of the so-called 1000 'High Production Volume Chemicals' have as yet no limit value and there are no data relating to them on which a limit could be based. The Community should address this issue, so that employers have guidelines to work to when making their assessments: the best current wisdom, even if not fully validated scientifically, is better than no guidance. Thus, one could envisage a Community list of limit values—even provisional ones—produced in a short period, and the Commission services are seeking a mechanism which would enable practical use to be made of data collected by the Community for a variety of purposes (e.g. 7th Amendment to the Dangerous Substances Directive, pesticide authorization, etc.). It would be far more useful to give guidance on many chemicals rather than concentrating on perfection for a few. What is the scientific basis for trying to justify a limit value 10% different from that adopted in another State? Would not the worker be better protected by a broader spectrum of limits in a scheme which would assess a substance approximately on the basis of a minimum of data—perhaps genotoxicity in short-term tests, irritation, comparison with LD 5O S or other pragmatic, simple means of getting at least an appreciation of areas of concern for chemicals for which no other data were available? The assessment could then be coupled with calculations of exposure—on the basis of whatever theoretical, mathematical or practical information was available—to enable the employer to judge what might be in his case the most effective protective measures to take. In the next year or so, it might be expected that chemicals will be considered in three groups for which the datasets vary considerably: —those for which a full up-to-date evaluation has been possible on modern scientific and technical data; —those for which ad hoc judgements have to be made but which nevertheless are based on extensive scientific and technical data; —and those for which limited data together with calculated estimations are the source of'administrative' figures.
680
Short Communication
Clearly the legal consequences of this approach would be different for the three groups and the figures derived on the basis of these different approaches would have different degrees of scientific certainty. Finally and as an extension of my concerns about limit values, I believe that Community provisions that call for the employer to carry out an assessment of his workplace have to be backed by some form of guidance so that everybody is working to an agreed set of rules. The employer's assessment is not simply a risk assessment of agents on his site but a coherent appreciation of the risks from that site. Without guidance, however well Member States transpose the legal text, the practical effect will be far from the convergence of minimum standards, and thus actions to resolve the issue will be required. Something could and should be initiated to avoid this situation, without in any way trespassing on Member States rights under the concepts of'subsidiarity'. In conclusion, one must return to this role of the Commission not only as a legislator but also as a catalyst for other activities. 1992 is showing how the Community can work together outside legislation. The near future will bring a new Scientific Agency for Health and Safety at the Workplace and the lessons of 1992, the Agency, and the initiatives by the Commission should encourage a healthier and safer workplace in the Community. After all, this is the fundamental aim of the 'Year' and the Community.
DISCUSSION Replies to Mr A. Woolley and Dr C. H. B. Binns: The Commission does not expect to set up a supranational inspection service relating to health and safety legislation in the workplace. In legal terms, with the exception of certain specially regulated areas, enforcement oflegislation is left to national governments as there is no provision in the Treaty mandating the Commission to do otherwise. Nevertheless, the Commission is responsible for the correct transposition of Community law into national legislation and through this role can exert influence on Member States and may even take a Member State to the European Court. In addition to this legislative role, the Commission services responsible for workpace health and safety legislation hold regular informal meetings with inspectorates, organize training courses for inspectors and promote exchange of inspectors to provide experience in other Member States. This non-legislative training is proving successful in encouraging uniform enforcement.
