Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-06-Speech-2-031"
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"en.20050906.6.2-031"2
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"Mr President, the Commissioner stated that exposure limit values for natural radiation were not deemed to be feasible, and I want to emphasise that point.
I want to begin by asking the Commissioner to indicate very clearly what the Commission's views are on this debate, on the amendments and on what has happened in the various committees. It would have been helpful if we had known your mind before we started, Commissioner, because we are speaking in a vacuum. Maybe you agree with what this or that side is saying, but we would like to know where you stand.
As I see it, we have a good piece of legislation: the framework directive requesting employers to mitigate health risks for employees. None of us disagree with that. We have already dealt with vibration, noise, electro-magnetic fields and now we are faced with optical radiation. I agree with it – it is a good piece of legislation – with the sole exception of the inclusion of solar radiation. We need legal certainty in the field of employment, both for employers and employees. There is no legal certainty in the area of risk assessment for exposure to solar radiation in the workplace, and it is a legal certainty that in a litigious age it will end up as a lawyers' charter, and nothing else.
If I choose to spend 10 hours on a beach on Saturday or Sunday, or 10 hours in the garden at 80 degrees exposed to the sun, or on the golf course in very hot sunshine, all the health authorities would say that it was far too long. What colleagues have said about skin cancer is absolutely true. But if I choose to spend my leisure time taking excess exposure to the sun, then go into the workplace on a Monday, say, and I am working on a construction site, or in the fields, in a vineyard, at a sports venue, beside a swimming pool or wherever, and I am already overexposed through lack of personal responsibility at the weekend, is it my employer's duty to ensure that I should not have any extra exposure to the sun on the Monday? Two hours might be too much in that case, let alone four hours.
If I am a red-haired, fair-skinned Irish person, two hours' sunshine is the maximum I should get, and with proper coverage from the sun, with a hat, covering up my skin and wearing protection. But if I am a dark-haired, brown-eyed, dark-skinned southern European, I could spend six or seven hours in the sunshine to no effect at all. What do the employers do, line up their employees on a Monday morning and check their skin types and whether they have been overexposed at the weekend? Or check whether they have been toasted on both sides at Torremolinos during the previous fortnight when they were on holiday and say 'Sorry, you can't go in the sun this week at all'? It is impossible to operate.
We want legal certainty. We want to leave personal responsibility to the individual. Yes, we want informed choices from a health point of view – everybody, not just employees, should be informed of the risks to over-exposure – but please, say to President Barroso for all of us, that, if he is serious about Lisbon-proofing regulation and about less regulation being better regulation, then we do not need this nanny-type regulation and solar radiation must be removed from the directive. It cannot be left to Member States, since there is a legal problem, I understand. Risk assessment cannot be left to each Member State under the terms of framework Directive 89/391, because it is a Community competence only. Please tell us what the options are and where you stand on this, Commissioner."@en1
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