August 30, 2002—Eight Candidate Countries have teamed up with the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work to launch joint occupational safety and health Web sites. 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.
According to recent European research, 40% of workers in the EU Candidate Countries believe that work is putting their health and safety at risk, compared to less than 30% 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 Web site.
The new Candidate Country sites provide 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 offer 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 familiar to users of the Agency’s Web site. Current users are from the 15 EU Member States, the EFTA countries, the United States, Canada, and Australia, as well as the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization.
The new sites, all accessible from the Agency’s European network site, are for: Bulgaria, Estoniak, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania and Slovenia
