More than 300 million euro (EUR) were allocated to financially support companies to invest in safety, in order to make their facilities and organization compliant with the law and implement training/information activities.

The incentives financed:

1. Compliance programmes: to make facilities and organization compliant with safety regulations, fostering the renewal of machinery, the installation of monitoring systems to reduce exposure to hazardous substances, and promoting a safety management system;
2. Information/training actions: to make workers aware of the risks they may run, and inform them of prevention and emergency procedures;
3. Tools and products: to provide the largest number of workers with innovative information and training tools, specific and user-friendly.

An X2 analysis compared three homogeneous groups of statistical units which benefited or did not benefit from the incentives. The group that benefited from incentives in 2002 showed a significant reduction in claims (down 25.5 per cent vs. the control group); the second group (2004) experienced a decline of 13.4 per cent.