But many want to see it reduced
UK health and safety and environment professionals believe that EU influence on regulation has a positive effect, according to a survey commissioned by Cedrec.
The survey shows that despite some misgivings, environment and safety professionals generally feel the EU is having a positive impact on boosting the quality of health and safety and environmental legislation.
Cedrec, which provides advice in interpreting and complying with environmental and safety legislation, undertook the survey to gauge popular perceptions about the EU.
Although respondents were generally positive about the EU, the survey did reveal that the majority of environment and safety professionals did not want to see any more EU legislation.
More than half (54 percent) of those surveyed believed that the EU was having a positive impact on making workplaces safer. Only a third (34 percent) felt it was having a negative effect.
More than two thirds (68 percent) of those surveyed believed that the EU was helping to improve the environment, while a quarter (25 percent) felt it was making things worse.
The survey revealed a reluctance to see any increase in environment and safety legislation — 54 percent of respondents want to see a reduction in legislation, while 43 percent thought the current amount of EU legislation was right.
The majority of participants thought the UK should take the EU elections seriously and will be voting in the elections. Most respondents consider the EU elections as important as the UK elections.
Cedrec director Gareth Billinghurst stressed the importance of the UK having a strong presence within the EU:
“The concerns I have with these elections are that they are being hijacked by various fringe political parties that have no intention of working with or within Europe, or working with Europe for the greater good of Great Britain.
“The majority of our health and safety and environmental legislation has its roots in Europe so as we are part of the EU, we need to ensure Europe works for us and take the lead when and where we can. Our votes in this election are key to this.
“A national general election is the only platform where we should be considering anti-European or protest votes. Raising such concerns at an election for MEPs to represent the UK in the European Parliament are misguided, badly timed and just weaken our voice. We need to take this election seriously.”
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I’m wary. The questions in the survey do not reflect the headline. I did not see a question stating “Are you for EU regulation”. What I saw was agreement that EU law was making the UK Safer. This could happen anyway by UK alone without EU Legislation. What it dosen’t ask is “Do we see these EU regulations being enforced elsewhere in EU countries making them as safe as UK?” Would the article be as pro EU then I wonder?
Hi Phil, thanks for your comment. We are not being pro or anti-EU, merely reporting on the survey itself, which admittedly seems to fall more on the ‘pro EU’ side of the coin. By their nature, headlines try to sum up a story in as short a sentence as possible, which does not leave much room for nuance. You make a good point about how EU regulations are enforced – we might look into this and see if we can do something a bit more in depth.
I am slightly confused by the article suggesting that practitioners are generally positive about the EU although the majority did not want to see any more legislation. Does this mean that if additional legislation was introduced that practitioners would be less positive about the EU?
The headliner makes a bold statement that UK SHE professionals believe that EU influence on legislation has been positive however further down through the article, only slightly more than half (54%) of the respondents thought it positive.
Surveys can be directed towards the intended results due to the manner in which questions are both presented and interpreted. Unfortunately the statements made throughout this article seem to support this demonstrating unconditional bias.
Clearly as an organisation that favours the EU as its business model includes ‘providing advice interpreting and complying with EU legislation’ including 7 paragraphs on the survey followed by 5 political paragraphs on the organisations favoured perception of the EU.
It is disappointing that the SHP has allowed itself to become a political platform particularly on the day of the EU elections.
Hi John, we published the article because it is the day of the EU elections, and it seemed timely. We are reporting on the results of Cedrec’s survey, and admittedly they are pro-EU. They are taking a stance, and we reported on their stance (and survey), because we felt it was an opportunity to stimulate some intelligent debate.
The April edition of Chemistry World notes that the head of Ineos – reportedly the UK’s largest chemical producer – has written an open letter to the EU President, Jose Manual Baroso,, predicting that the European chemical industry could be close in the next 10 years. The Chemical Industry Council has similar views and has warned that EU’s environmental policies work against European manufacturers.
It is a good example of how disastrous the Legislation imposed by the EU has been – across the board; not only for UK. So I, as a safety professional who voted enthusiastically to join the EU, many years ago, am far less in favour now , seeing what it has become.
The Commissioners in the EU now admit to launching a damaging piece of untested of legislation in REACh. It has already done untold damage to the European industry generally, in terms of future investment, because of the possibility that certain processes might be prohibited. The process of authorisation is out of control and has already cost billions, because a bunch of the lunatic fringe green parties in Europe think they can re-write the Periodic Table and we in UK cannot stop it.
What they have done is begun the export of vital industries that rely on chemical processes to countries that do not have the degree of control that we have.
Therefore I disagree with the whole tenor of your article. It is about time safety organisations like IOSH, considered the likely outcome of their hubris.
I have never seen an article which better articulates basic reasons for leaving the EU altogether before it is too late for our economy
The comments above surely cast into doubt the validity of the statements made in this article. Perhaps we are just the in 46% of practitioners who disagree that the EU has brought about positive changes to H&S or merely the authors have conducted a school boy methodology and analysis of their results?
Either way, the main head line is clearly embellished which incidentally appears to oppose that also of the UK electorate given the results of the weekend?