Work-related deaths continue in the EU. Over 3 thousand victims and nearly 3 million injured

Brussels – European occupational safety still has flaws. In 2022, over 3 thousand fatalities and nearly 3 million non-fatal accidents, with a ratio of about 905 non-fatal accidents for every fatal one. According to Eurostat, there has been a progressive decrease compared with previous years, based on administrative data from the European Statistics on Accidents at Work (ESAW).

The definition of an accident at work is an event during the course of work which leads to physical or mental harm, and fatal ones result in the death of the victim within one year. Although non-fatal accidents are less serious, they still cause substantial damage to victims and their families, as in the case of injuries that cause permanent disabilities.

Between 2021 and 2022, there was an increase in the total number of non-fatal occupational accidents in the EU, some 87,139 more, or a 3 percent increase. The rise also reflects the easing or elimination of restrictions associated with Covid-19. Despite this, we see a 61 decrease in fatal accidents in 2022 compared to the previous year.

At a country level, Germany leads the way in non-fatal injuries, with over 700,000 victims, followed by France, Spain, and Italy, which has over 330,000 workers involved. There was a negative record of fatalities in France, with over 600 victims, followed by Italy, Spain, and Germany, which continue to remain the top four nations in the ranking.

However, the number of accidents varies greatly depending on the type of economic activity.  Overall, most of them involve men.

Construction, transportation and storage, manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, and fishing account for 65.5 percent of fatal accidents and 43 percent of non-fatal ones. Almost a quarter of work-related fatalities are in the construction sector alone, an element that should make Europeans reflect on the safety of workers and especially the need for prevention. Non-fatal accidents were relatively common in the manufacturing sector (18 percent of the total in the EU in 2022), followed by health care and social work, construction, and trade. These four sectors are the only ones for which double-digit shares of the total number of non-fatal accidents were recorded.

The gender imbalance can be explained by the fact that the sectors most exposed to risk have a higher proportion of male workers, with approximately two out of three accidents in the EU involving male workers in 2022. The proportion of women and men in the workforce and their different roles must also be considered, given the imbalanced conditions in the labor market, as also seen by the gender pay gap.

From the perspective of the European Union, there is extensive regulation of the labor market and the quality of workers’ lives. Equally important are work-related psychological disorders, such as burnout, which have a significant impact on workers but are not included in these statistics (but are recognized at the community level).

From the Treaties up to the 1989 Framework Directive (89/391/EEC), the EU has put much effort into labor and worker protection. The guiding principle of European rules states that “the employer has a duty to ensure the health and safety of workers in every aspect related to work, while the worker has a duty to follow the employer’s instructions on health and safety, and to report potential hazards.”

Mutual compliance would be desirable to reduce the number of accidents to the so-called “Vision Zero” featured in the 2021-2027 European Strategy  and to protect “the health and safety of the EU’s nearly 170 million workers.”