The European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) and the European Federation of Education Employers (EFEE) held a joint conference on 29th of September 2009 in Brussels. This event came as the latest step in a process initiated by the ETUCE five years ago. During the conference, the two organisations signed up a joint application letter to create a European Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee for Education, in conformity with Articles 138-139 of the EC Treaty.
The European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE), which was established in 1975, represents 118 teachers' unions in 28 European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries. ETUCE is composed of national organisations of teachers and other staff in education being member organisations of Education International (EI) or the World Confederation of Teachers (WCT). It has associated member organisations in the Central and Eastern European countries. The total coverage in Europe amounts to 166 organisations.
The EFEE was established in 2009, and has members in 18 countries. The overall objective of EFEE is to represent the interests of education providers of all levels (from pre-school to university and vocational education) as employers at European level, and thereby contribute to the improvement of education in the member states of the EU.

The German Social Accident Insurance (DGUV) started this campaign in January 2010.
Every year, 230.000 accidents occur during transport and traffic within plants, 150 of them are fatal. In addition, 23.000 accidents occur on public roads during business journeys (170 of them fatal) and 175.000 accidents occur involving schoolchildren on public roads. In 2008, more than 500 insurants lost their lives due to one of these casualties.
The campaign "Fight the risk" aims at prevention and reduction of these accidents. A website is online now, offering information for employers, employees, pupils and teachers, links, videoclips and personalized E- Cards including a short prevention clip that can be sent to friends. A multimedia quiz will follow.
Click here for the website (DE), here for an information leaflet (EN). The links will open in a new browser window.

Delegates from across Europe attended the first international seminar looking into young people’s involvement in injury prevention.
The three-day event, which was hosted by CSEC and AdRisk (the Community Action on Adolescents and Injury Risk project, a European initiative) and held at the headquarters of RoSPA in Birmingham, proved a major success.
There were inspiring examples of work from around the continent, including presentations from young people who are involved in injury prevention in the UK, and lively workshop sessions during which delegates sought to define “high quality practical safety education” and “risk competence”.
Click here for the seminar results website with more information and interesting links to projects and documentaries of the young participants.

On 26 January the kick off meeting of the Sifa Network Thuringia took place in Poessneck, Germany. The network aims at fostering the exchange of experience between all actors in the field of OSH-management and supporting continuous vocational training of safety experts. The network has an open loop, everyone who is interested in the work of safety experts is invited to join the network.
The network is under the auspices of ENETOSH. Ulrike Bollmann, coordinator of ENETOSH, underlined the importance of an international exchange of experience and the continuous professionalisation of safety experts. The Institute for Work and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance offers a broad range of seminars to develop the competencies of safety experts. The safety experts come from different branches and the attendants from all over Germany.
Jörg Stojke, director of the BGW Academy in Dresden, pointed out that networking between safety experts is of an increasing importance.