According to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, every five seconds an EU worker is involved in a work-related accident, and every two hours one worker dies in an accident at work.

Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Commission) and Member States are working on a programme to give consistency to workplace injury statistics in the EU.

The progress so far means that, based on common definitions, Eurostat has published standardised statistics for fatal injuries, and injuries leading to more than 3 days absence. The latest statistics are for 2005.