Health and safety standards under deregulation threat

In the quarterly CLR-News (2-2015), titled ‘The future of the EU health and safety legislation’ (www.clr-news.org under Publications), editor Jan Cremers (Law School UvT and AIAS) questions whether the OHS-policy developed is internal market proof and resistant enough to the reigning dogma of deregulation. He notices that the EC is leaning too much on so-called evidence coming from business consultants and their very one-dimensional research patchwork of attitudes and other ‘irritations’ expressed by entrepreneurs. Cremers argues that the high fatality rate among newcomers and migrants, registered in several studies, is in itself already good reason for a strong occupational safety and health policy all over Europe, and, with the mobility of workers being prominent on the EU agenda, to work out a more coherent and unified, upwards oriented policy in this field as a matter of urgency.