On 9 October, the Council of the EU adopted the Defence Omnibus, following the European Parliament’s vote on 16 September. The new rules will now come into force. When the European Commission first proposed the Omnibus, industriAll Europe warned against its dangers, stressing that defending Europe also means protecting its labour and environmental law.

The Defence Omnibus allows companies to derogate from REACH, the EU’s main chemicals regulation. This has very serious consequences for workers’ health and safety. In practice, the safeguards that restrict carcinogenic substances have been dropped, leaving workers unprotected. Even worse, the obligation to clearly label and report dangerous substances has been removed. This violates workers’ right to be informed about the substances they handle.

The Omnibus is not limited to defence companies. It also covers dual-use firms, where the derogations apply to the entire factory, not only to the defence production line. The European Commission is pushing as many companies as possible to switch to defence production. As a result, the Omnibus puts the health and safety of industrial workers well beyond the defence sector at risk.

IndustriAll Europe’s Deputy General Secretary Isabelle Barthès said:

“We are very concerned about the Defence Omnibus’ rollback of workers’ health and safety rights, and about the derogations from environmental law that allow more pollution. From the start of the process, we have warned against this approach and urged the European Commission to reconsider this damaging ramp-up strategy.

Decades of underinvestment in Europe’s defence industry cannot be made up for overnight by exempting defence from workers’ rights and environmental protection laws. Europe can only reach its new defence ambitions with the workers in the sector, and they need quality, safe jobs. The Omnibus does the opposite.

Trade unions will need to be even more vigilant in the workplace to make sure that health and safety standards are not compromised by this worrying legislation. We will alert our members on the shop floor and work to secure workers’ rights in collective agreements.”

The Defence Omnibus is part of a wider wave of EU omnibus laws that trade unions see as deregulation disguised as simplification.