The enlargement of the European Union is now a reality; globalization continues, and the international standards organizations are gaining in importance. European OH&S institutions must therefore ensure that they possess the resources which they need in order to increase their effectiveness.

”An Enlarged Europe in a Globalized World”: three blocks of papers and two panel discussions provided the chairs of the various sessions with the opportunity to make their own statements on the topical issues. Excerpts from these statements are reported below.

In one of the series of papers presented at the conference, representatives from OH&S institutions in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, and from the European Commission had the opportunity to describe their initial experiences with the enlarged Europe, and their expectations for the future.

Against a backdrop of rising costs and dwindling resources, closer co-operation is essential in the various fields such as standardization, testing, certification, and also research. The network structures already in place provide an outstanding basis for such co-operation. David Buchanan (HSL, UK) made this observation in his introduction to the first block of papers at the conference.

The conference was held in Paris on 20/21 October 2005 under the heading ”An Enlarged Europe in a Globalized World”, and was the successor to the 1st European Conference held in 2001 in Dresden. 127 delegates from 15 European countries attended the event. The conference was organized by the INRS (France) together with the CIOP-PIB (Poland), Eurogip (France), the HVBG (Germany), the HSL (United Kingdom), the INSHT (Spain), and KAN.

55 EUROSHNET members from numerous eastern and western European countries met in Paris on 19 October 2005 in order to add a personal dimension to the contacts which they had already forged on EUROSHNET. A further purpose of the event was the sharing of experience in the use of this communications instrument, which was created for the European occupational health and safety community.