Major risk avoidance-fulfilling our responsibilities - Costs and benefits of Romania's safety integration into the European Union

The European Union documents regarding risks (Seveso II directive, other EU safety and health directives etc.) are novel to Romanian specialists. In the view of Romania's integration in the EU, safety issues emerging from the local implementation of these directives raise various important structural and financial issues. This paper focuses on providing a valid methodology that could be engaged for comparative analysis between both different local economic sectors and a broad range of industries within other candidate states for entry into the EU. It does so by presenting the operational analysis of a recent survey on the identification of necessary costs for compliance with the European Safety Directives, that has engaged more than 10000 various economic enterprises. Its findings were examined in relation to collected data on Romanian occupational accidents and diseases. The outcome both advances the development of a cost effective integration model based on the optimisation of expenses and touches upon practical implementation of safety issues encountered locally.