Health and Safety in the Workplace in Belgium
| Autor | Pieter Pecinovsky |
| Cargo | PhD Researcher. Institute for Labour Law, KU Leuven |
| Páginas | 21-30 |
IUSLabor 2/2015
3
HEALTH AND SAFETY IN THE WORKPLACE IN BELGIUM
Pieter Pecinovsky
PhD Researcher
Institute for Labour Law, KU Leuven
Introduction
Health and safety at work is generally called “the well-being” of the worker at work
(during his occupational performance). The Belgian legislation knows a large variety of
obligations for the employers to prevent accidents or damage to the health of their
employees. He has to install special services, mechanisms and institutions in his
company to make sure that a good prevention is provided. These obligations are
naturally more complicated for large companies than for SME’s. Yet even for those the
health and safety legislation can prove quite an administrative burden. However
according to the 2013 year report of the Fund for Occupational Accidents the accidents
at the work place decreased from 276.281 in 1990 to 126.726 in 2013.
1 The stricter
legislation thus seems to have an effect. In 2013 there were 72 fatal occupational
accidents, of which 18 were traffic accidents. With regards to occupational illnesses,
some 2.978 new cases were notified by the prevention advisors-physicians in 2013. In
2000 it was 1.378, in 2005 it was 1.647 and in 2010 1.584. Looking to the other years,
there only seems to be a significant augmentation of notifications since 2011. Unlike for
occupational accidents, occupational illness are thus not declining, yet the causes of
such illnesses could of course lay way further in the past.2
1. Which national law implements Council Directive 89/391/EEC of 12 June 1989
on the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the safety and
health of workers at work? What prevention obligations does your country’s
regulation on health and safety in the workplace establish?
The basics of Council Directive 89/391/EEC were already present in the Prevention
decree of 20 June 1975. Yet the Directive was more detailed, thus the legislation to look
at is the Act of 4 August 1996 regarding the well-being of the workers during the
performance of their work together with the decrees that execute its provisions. Those
decrees are collected in the Code on the well-being at work.
1 Statistics on occupational accidents can be found in the yearly reports of the Occupational Accidents
Fund: http://www.fao.fgov.be/nl/publicaties.
2 Statistics on occupational illnesses can be found on the site of the Occupational I lnesses Fund:
http://www.fmp-fbz.fgov.be/web/content.php?lang=nl&target=workers#/documentations-annual-report.
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