European agreement

In April 2007, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) signed a framework agreement on harassment and violence at work. The agreement sets out that the European social partners (that is, employers and unions) condemn harassment and violence in all their forms. It aims to prevent, and where necessary manage, problems of physical violence in the workplace (as well as bullying and harassment).

An evaluation of the agreement’s implementation published in 2015 reported that eight countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Slovenia, Iceland and Norway) deal with both harassment and violence in their health and safety legislation. And in five countries, (Cyprus, Denmark, Spain, France and Luxemburg), the national cross-industry social partners used bipartite or tripartite collective agreements to implement the Framework Agreement.