Standardisation and OHS in Europe: six organisations sign a joint declaration

INRS and EUROGIP in France, KAN in Germany, CIOP in Poland, INSST in Spain and FIOH in Finland have adopted new common positions on occupational health and safety (OHS) standardisation, which constitute an enriched and updated version of the first agreement signed by the first three bodies in Bonn in 2014.

The “Bonn Declaration” covered emerging issues at that time, such as new standardisation documents other than standards or standardisation relating to OHS management systems. The new version, published in December 2023, takes into account technological advances such as artificial intelligence and the new standardisation strategy, and covers :

• Adapting standardisation relating to products, the organisation of occupational health and safety in enterprises and documents treated as standards to the progress made in recent years;
• Maintaining the European level of protection when international ISO and IEC standards are adopted as harmonised standards;
• The approval of “HAS Consultants” (Harmonised Standards Consultants) to check the conformity of harmonised standards with EU legislation;
  the proposal to speed up the publication of harmonised standards in the Official Journal of the EU once they have been reviewed;
• Clear identification of documents treated as standards: CWA (CEN Workshop Agreement), IWA (ISO Workshop Agreement), PAS (Publicly Available Specifications);
• The use of Technical Specifications (TS) for projects completed in a very short timeframe and Technical Reports (TR) for projects with a purely informative content in the field of occupational health and safety;
• Differentiating the role of standards according to whether they relate to product safety or the organisation of prevention in companies;
  asking standardisation bodies to develop standards after evaluation and only if there is a real improvement in OHS and no conflict with national regulations.

Updated Declaration