Conference of the European Forum 2021:

"The future is now: Advancing Accident Insurance in Europe"

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The annual conference of the European Forum of the Insurance against Accidents at Work and Occupational Diseases will take place from 15 to 17 June 2021 as a virtual event.

We, the German Social Accident Insurance, have the honor to hold the Presidency of the European Forum for another year and to welcome you to the virtual event with the title "The future is now: Advancing Accident Insurance in Europe".

Please take note of the save-the-date (PDF, 355 kB, non-accessible) .

The European Forum counts member institutions from 21 countries and the organization´s aim is to

  • promote and safeguard the principle of such a specific insurance,
  • actively improve the situation of workers in Europe who have suffered an accident at work or an occupational disease and
  • promote the exchange of information and experiences among the member institutions.

In this context, it is a pleasure for us to organize the annual conference and present you the planned agenda of the conference 2021.


15 June 2021 Working Group Meetings
09h00 – 10h30 Occupational Diseases
11h00 – 12h30 Legislation
13h30 – 15h00 Communication
15h30 – 17h00 Digitalization
16 June 2021 1st Conference Day
13h00 – 13h45 Welcome by DGUV and the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs
13h55 – 15h20 Session I "Agenda 2050: The future starts now"
15h35 – 17h00 Session II "Digitalization: Tackling the challenge"
18h00 – 19h00 Social Event
17 June 2021 2nd Conference Day
09h30 – 09h40 Welcome back
09h40 – 11h05 Session III "Occupational Diseases: Developments and perspectives"
11h15 – 11h50 Review of the conference 2021, reports on the sessions and handover of the Presidency to Croatia
12h00 – 13h00 Plenary Assembly

In the above-mentioned three sessions, we would like to discuss with you the following themes:

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Agenda 2050: The future starts now

Looking into Europe’s future, we will talk about Smart Finance, Smart Policy and Smart Work.


1. Smart Policy:

We will develop a vision about Europe and its approach to social security for workers:

  • What will the European Union look like in 2050?
  • What will social insurance look like in thirty years of time?
  • What is the role of the European Forum in the future?
  • What can the European Forum contribute to achieve our vision of social security for workers in 2050?

2. Smart Work:

Furthermore, we can observe a change in the world of work concerning the digitalization. The pandemic has also an impact on our working life, because more people are working from home than ever before.

Should we – because of the lack of separation between work and private life – insure all accidents or demand a revision of the EU's general occupational health and safety directive?

3. Smart Finance:

A topic is financing accident insurance systems in times of increasing the platform work and an emerging gig economy. We will try to find answers on how to cover the workforce in these industries in a financially sustainable way.

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Session "Digitalization: Tackling the challenge"

The joint decision of the European Forum to set up a Working Group Digitalization makes it clear that although this topic is a cross-cutting task for insurances against accidents at work and occupational diseases, it is certainly not a marginal issue.

The aim of the virtual event is to provide scope for the exchange of experiences, to identify common interests and to shed light on possible areas of cooperation. For example, big data, open data and, of course, artificial intelligence are topics to be jointly addressed for mutual benefit of the Forum members.

So let us identify topics that the Working Group Digitalization should deal with.


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Session "Occupational Diseases: Developments and perspectives"

The prevention of occupational diseases is of central and strategic importance for occupational health and safety as well as for the scope of compensation benefits for occupational diseases.

The contents, structures and processes of the respective measures differ in some cases considerably between the European states. With an exchange of knowledge and experience on measures, which the different states had successfully implemented, we would like to compile an overview of what we already know.

This exchange could open a new way for common best practices.


Contact

Ann-Kathrin Schäfer
Tel: +49 30 13001-1605

Helene Frank
Tel.: +49 30 13001-1601