The accession of the 10 new member states to the European Union in 2004 represented a major development. While their specific needs in occupational safety and health must be addressed, all member states face some common challenges. Contemporary workplaces must cope with constant social, economic, and technological change, including strong demographic trends that alter the workforce profile as to gender, age, and ethnic origin. The new community strategy on occupational safety and health has identified several challenges—especially “emerging risks”. It highlights the need for a genuine culture of risk prevention to anticipate and control risks and requires that the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work take a leading role in creating a risk observatory. The Agency has recently consulted on a draft report identifying the main research priorities across the European Union and will support the research community in their actions to tackle major problems in occupational safety and health.

Key terms emerging risk; EU; European Union; occupational safety and health; organizational change; policy; prevention; research; risk; risk observatory