Investigation on the impact of national regulations on the occupational safety

Occupational accidents still represent for EU area an heavy challenge to deal with, despite in 1989 the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (article 153) stated that ‘[…] the Union shall support and complement the activities of the Member States in the following fields: (a) improvement in particular of the working environment to protect workers’ health and safety; […]’ After more than 20 years of Work Safety policy, in 2013 Eurostat registered for the EU-28 area more than 3.1 million of work-load non-fatal accidents with at least four calendar days of absence from work, and 3647 fatal accidents. In 1994 Italy adopted the EU 89/931 Directive on work safety with the 626 Legislative Decree 626, substituted in 2008 by the 81/08 Legislative Decree, which introduced the risk-based decision making concept. In this paper the impact of Safety Work laws on the Italian occupational accident domain is investigated. A detailed study to assess the evolution of non-fatal and fatal accidents is presented, analyzing the Italian occupational accident data-base before the 626 Legislative Decree (1994), and after the enforcement of the main Safety Work laws. Due to the economic, political and social evolution occurred from 1994, a discussion on the factors able to influence the productivity trend is also provided.