20
May
2026
Watch
The need to reduce work-related fatalities (debate)
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, when we talk about deaths at work, we often risk stopping at the numbers, but behind those numbers there are people, there are families waiting for someone at home and they have never seen him come back. The latest figures show more than 3 000 victims at work and almost 3 million accidents every year. And then there are the occupational diseases, too often invisible and underdiagnosed. This resolution starts from a very clear and very simple principle: Safety at work is not a cost, it is a moral, civil, economic responsibility. Today, this responsibility concerns a profoundly changed world of work. There are no longer only traditional risks, there are new forms of pressure linked to digitalization, algorithmic management, the rhythms imposed by platforms, the fragmentation of responsibilities along increasingly complex production chains. There are also young workers, who enter the labour market with less experience and greater exposure to risks; There are vulnerable, mobile workers employed in subcontracting chains, where security is lost between fragmented skills and insufficient controls. For this reason, the text insists on prevention, training and safety culture, more controls. But there is also a principle of balance that needs to be reiterated: safety at work is not protected by criminalising companies or by contrasting workers with production systems, it is protected by building serious, proportional and sustainable rules. Within this vision is the proposal to establish a European day in memory of the victims of work, to be celebrated every year on 8 August in memory of the tragedy of Marcinelle, where 262 workers from different European countries died. Marcinelle does not belong only to the memory of a country. It is part of our social history, it is the symbol of a Europe that has understood, in the most painful way possible, that freedom of movement of work cannot exist without shared dignity, security and responsibility. For this reason, we want to turn memory into concrete commitment.