Editorial
Precision, not blanket solutions
Simplification of regulations and elimination of bureaucracy are currently high on the political agenda, both in the EU institutions and in Germany. Streamlining of bodies of rules and regulations and clearer structuring of competencies are important objectives. Occupational safety and health is one of the areas in which rules and regulations should be simple, comprehensible and practicable. Simplification should, however, be conducted in a way that continues to ensure workplace safety and health.
Efficient and effective occupational safety and health is not a bureaucratic obstacle, but a prerequisite for a strategy that integrates OSH activities into company processes and thereby ensures healthy and high-performing workers and businesses. Occupational accidents and diseases lead to working days being lost and place a burden on companies, social insurance systems and, above all, the affected workers themselves.
Standards and specifications can provide valuable support during the application of statutory provisions. They are indispensable if occupational safety and health measures are to be effective, particularly with regard to safe work equipment. They often illustrate practicable solutions, can be amended more quickly than legislation and offer manufacturers and companies legal certainty by reflecting up-to-date good practice. In view of this, a sweeping deletion of references to standards and specifications from legislation, as called for by the Federal Modernisation Agenda, does not appear constructive. It disparages these references unduly by generalising them as “bureaucracy”. Rather than blanket deletion of references to standards, a judicious approach is required in which standards and specifications are adapted purposefully to the body of rules and statutory regulations. This would ensure that in the sphere of occupational safety and health, bureaucracy is not eliminated at the cost of clarity and certainty.