Evaluation of European directives on safety and health at work

On behalf of the European Commission, and in conjunction with two German partners, KOOP and TNS Infratest, Prevent is developing a methodology for the evaluation of European OSH directives, applicable to all member states.

 

The methodology introduces an evaluation model, which is based on the chronology and the dynamics of the legislative process. The evaluation covers all consecutive steps of the legislative process in a number of steps: initial relevance, preparation of the legislation, implementation and impact. 

In order to evaluate each of the consecutive steps, a set of 17 questions and subquestions have been proposed. They constitute the framework of the evaluation methodology. Each question corresponds to a specific aspect that the evaluation will examine, a so-called ‘indicator’. Indicators are needed to describe how well legislation has led to progress towards the objectives. They aim to evaluate specific parts of the legislative process and they provide the link between the evaluation questions and the available data.

The newly developed generic methodology has been adapted to a specific evaluation instrument for the purpose of evaluating the Workplace Directive 89/654/EC. An evaluation of the Directive was performed ivia stakeholder interviews in EU-27 and a number of EFTA counrties and literature research.