Priorities

The Construction Products Regulation (CPR) is the key legislative instrument for construction products in the EU and sets rules for the marketing of construction products in the internal market.

The new proposal for a revised CPR is part of the European Commission’s “Sustainable Products Initiative” (SPI), a broader legislative package on sustainable products that the Commission presented on 30 March 2022. The proposal aims to address the numerous shortcomings of the existing legislative framework (problems related to the development and citation of harmonised standards, problems related to the legal framework surrounding construction products, problems related to the quality of market surveillance, problems related to the absence of climate, environmental and sustainability performance requirements of construction products).

According to FIEC’s analysis, the new Commission proposal would have far-reaching, and mostly negative, consequences on contractors and construction SMEs if adopted in its current form. The proposal extends the scope of application of the Regulation to a lot more economic operators. Most notably, the proposal includes contractors into its scope when manufacturing products on-site for immediate incorporation or for the direct installation of products into the construction works. It also adds significant burdens on contractors regarding the reuse and remanufacturing of products. SMEs and micro-enterprises would be particularly affected by new administrative obligations related to the declaration of performance and the declaration of conformity of products.

The proposal also foresees that the current regulation would remain in force until 2045. The transition to the new framework would thus take more than two decades during which both the current and the future regulation would have to be applied. FIEC has identified other major problems, such as the absence of short-term or interim solutions that would allow to resolve the long-standing backlog in the citation of harmonised standards. Present or outdated harmonised standards would only be progressively replaced during the transition period that could last, for some product families, twenty years. This would be largely incompatible with the challenges the construction sector faces (Green Deal, circular economy, digitalisation). 

FIEC’s Position Paper on the proposal for a revised Construction Products Regulation can be found here.

All FIEC Position Paper are available HERE.