EU-OSHA Blog

As you can see in our “foto de familia”, the Agency’s regulation stipulates that our Governing Board should include a tripartite representation from each of the EU Member States, together with representatives from the Commission and Eurofound as an observer.

It may seem odd that there are more Board members than Agency staff (there’s some 65 of us), but we see the composition of our Board as an essential element in our work:

First, it illustrates how important tripartism is to successful OSH, and how deep it runs through everything we do at the Agency, and how we do it. (In case you’re wondering, yes, we practise what we preach: I maintain a close dialogue and regular meetings with the Agency’s statutory Staff Committee and with Union Syndicale–EASHW, the trade union set up by the Agency staff).

Second, such a broad consensus –tripartite and across 27 Member States– provides very strong support for our work programme: we can be certain that our activities really address the most important needs and that our most important stakeholders will support us in order to achieve our ambitious objectives. It may well be that in the forthcoming meeting of the Governing Board at the end of 2010 we will also have the EFTA/EEA members present based on the recent agreement between the EU and EFTA.

This year’s meeting took place last Thursday and Friday, during an unusually cold spell for Bilbao. The Board was satisfied with the Agency’s work in 2009, and agreed the strategic lines for our work in 2011. This gives us time to prepare the more detailed implementation plans, in close collaboration with our tripartite Advisory Groups for the most important work elements, so that we’re ready to go in January. In a later post, I will tell you more about our plans for 2011, including our new campaign on Safe Maintenance – keep an eye on our website for the official launch on 28 April.

The Board took the opportunity to bid a warm farewell to Bob Koning (employers’ representative from The Netherlands) and Bertil Remaeus (government representative from Sweden). Bertil had been the Chair of the Governing Board since its last meeting. Last week, the Board elected Christa Schweng as new Chair. I look forward to continue the good cooperation developed with previous Chairs – now with Christa.

I would also like to thank Bob and Bertil for the support they have provided to the Agency over all these years, and wish them a long, active and happy retirement.