Ceemet and other European employers BusinessEurope, CEMBUREAU, ECFIA, EuroCommerce, Eurometaux, FIEC, IMA Europe and UEAPME have drafted a letter to the Members of the European Parliament’s Employment Committee.
The European employers are concerned about the approach taken in the Committee’s draft report on the revision of the directive on protecting workers from exposure to carcinogens and mutagens at work.
Ceemet and other European employers understand the need for an ambitious proposal to protect workers from exposure to carcinogens and mutagens at the workplace. We believe that the Commission’s original proposal provides for that level of ambition, by including binding limit values for a number of additional substances classified as carcinogenic.
Not to mention that the Commission will come with further waves of substances to be included in the directive. And in actual fact, many of the proposed limit values already create substantial challenges, especially for SMEs and microcompanies. However, we have strong concerns that proposing lower limit values for a number of substances and considerably extending the scope of the directive, will only lead to drawn-out and difficult discussions with the Council and Commission. This will not be good for worker protection, nor for the credibility of the EU and its decision-making process.
European employers therefore strongly encourage the members of the EP Employment Committee, to come to a sensible conclusion of this file, by supporting the approach taken by the Commission and the Council, so that an agreement can be found in good time.
