The draft report by Estelle Ceulemans (S&D, Belgian) on taking account of psychosocial risks at work and calling for a European directive on the subject (see EUROPE 13836/16) was relatively well received on Wednesday 15 April by the members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL).
At a time when the European Commission is considering whether to include psychosocial risks in the workplace in its future legislation on high-quality jobs, scheduled for the end of 2026, the Belgian MEP is proposing a compulsory annual assessment of psychosocial risks and, in the event of major organisational change by the company, better definitions of psychosocial risks and related illnesses, by recognising them as occupational diseases.
The aim is also to lighten, and even reverse, the burden of proof to enable fairer and more effective recognition of mental health-related harm at work, she explained.
The compulsory assessment will have to be accompanied by a concrete action plan: reducing overload, supervising working hours, limiting predictability and respecting the right to disconnect.
While the political groups supported the broad outlines of the project, the PfE representatives claimed that the report did not provide a sufficiently positive vision of work and also ran the risk, with new legislation, of increasing the burden on companies.
“It’s one thing to protect against abuse, but it’s quite another to consider any workstation as a risk of creating an occupational disease”, said Spain’s Margarita de la Pisa Carrion. “Here, we want to reverse the burden of proof. It’s as if every difficulty had to give rise to a new legal category, a new administrative obligation, a new regulation from Brussels.”
For the ECR group, it is also a question of amending the text so as not to make the employer solely responsible for unhappiness at work, when “psychosocial disorders and stress at work have multidimensional and multifaceted causes”, stressed the Italian MEP Maria Teresa Vivaldini.
So don’t “put all the responsibility on employers. Especially when you consider the composition of our industrial fabric, over 90% of which is made up of SMEs. Elements such as mechanisms for reversing the burden of proof or annual plans are red lines”.
Nor does the ECR group consider it “necessary to introduce a new directive. It would be more appropriate to strengthen the implementation of existing frameworks”.
Renew Europe welcomed the minimum standards put forward by the Belgian MEP, but “certain provisions would be very difficult for SMEs to implement”, explained Grégory Alione (French). The Left also welcomed this as a very good basis on which to work.
For its part, the Commission stated that the subject “is one of the Commission President’s priorities for the period 2024-2029, and we are actively working to find the best solutions to help the Member States”. “We are starting from a solid base: the 1989 framework directive on safety and health at work”, said its representative, Artur Furtado.
This directive “covers all occupational risks and includes key prevention and protection principles for all sectors and all workers”.
However, as part of the legislation on quality employment, “the Commission is examining the revision of the directives on the workplace and display screens. Extending the scope of application, while guaranteeing proportionality and taking psychosocial risks into account, is under consideration”, said the Commission representative. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)