Posted By Kelly-Anne Holifield
I need to become an expert in European health and safety law as our organisation is now expanding across Europe. (Specifically Holand, Austria, Greece, Italy and france.)

Can any one recommend any useful courses on European law. Also if you could recommend useful reference books or guidance documents I'd be vety grateful.

I am also looking to buy health and safety books in the relevent languages, so if anyone can recommend a good source of european language health and safety books,that would be very useful.

Many thanks and kindest regards,
Kel.

Posted By Kelly-Anne Holifield
Dear Ray,

Thank you so much for the advice and I will definitely look into the university course you suggested. I am still currently sitting my Diploma so I'm going to have my work cut out completing that first.

Thanks for clarifying the EU situation.

Many thanks and kind regards,
Kelly.

Posted By Chris Packham
Whilst Kelly-Anne is correct in that under EU Directives there should be some similarity between the law in each state, my experience has been that different countries have different legal systems and vastly different structures under which health and safety operates.

For example, in Germany health and safety is very much a function within the trade associations (Berufsgenossenschaft)who provide considerable input into their membership's operations. (And you have to be a member of the relevant trade association to operate.)

When teaching in Austria last year I was told that they had only just passed a law requiring employers to pay for PPE. Up the then apparently the employer could deduct the cost of PPE from the employee's salary!

In Sweden I understand that all employers must subscribe to an occupational health service. We don't have that here.

I am sure that Merv will tell us that things in France are different again.

So there isn't really a level playing field and you will need to identify what the situation is in each country.

Chris

Posted By Dirk Nowak
Well, Kelly-Anne,

As a starter I would recommend to you the following website :
http://osha.europa.eu/OSHA/

This will guide you to the countries´ sites, such as :
http://nl.osha.europa.eu/systems
http://at.osha.europa.eu/systems

In some cases you can even choose your language.

As for France - you will find a brief explanation of the rather complex system there at :
http://en.inrs.fr/
-> About INRS -> Prevention in France

But as you said, you would like to excercise your language skills - here´s one for you :
http://www.bossons-fute.com/Legislation/index.php
This will give you a regular update on french SHE-legislation, directly linking to "Legifrance" - the official legislation server.

And if their weird legislation sorting system (By date, not by topic) is getting you down - do like the french did in former days.

Sit back, have a glass of wine and smoke a cigarette.
(Those days are gone - even there it is now prohibited in the workplace...)

Dirk