EU applicant states launch health and safety websites

Eight European Union candidate countries, including Malta, have teamed up with the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work to launch joint occupational safety and health websites.

The agency was set up by the EU to help meet the information needs in the field of occupational safety and health.

The launch of the new sites in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia marks a milestone in the implementation of the agency's strategy to integrate all 13 EU candidate countries into its information network, the Department of Information said.

The sites provide instant access to a wealth of information on a wide range of safety and health issues.

As well as linking directly to EU-network information, they also make available at the click of a mouse up-to-date national information on legislation and regulations, good practice solutions to workplace safety problems, research, statistics, training and other fields.

The sites follow the structure and presentation of the agency's website network familiar to users of the agency's established online information network.

This already includes the 15 EU member states, the EFTA countries, the US, Canada and Australia as well as the International Labour Organisation and the World Health Organisation.

According to recent European research, 40 per cent of workers in the EU candidate countries believe that work is putting their health and safety at risk, compared to fewer than 30 per cent of their EU counterparts.

To tackle these issues, a considerable number of partnership projects between EU member states and candidate countries have been carried out or are underway. Details of many of these projects can now be found on the agency's website: http://europe.osha.eu.int/systems/programmes/

The new sites are also accessible from the Agency's European network site: http://osha.eu.int/