The Revised Construction Products Regulation

Introduction

A review of the Construction Products Regulation (CPR) was first considered in 2016, only four years after the 2011 Regulation entered into force. With the Commission's announcement of the European Green Deal in December 2019, matters were settled: the Regulation was to be revised. The European Commission then presented a draft proposal in 2022. This draft proposal was extensively revised by the co-legislators, i.e. the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. The European institutions agreed on a compromise version of the text in a trilogue in December 2023. Having undergone legal-linguistic review, the final text was confirmed by the European Parliament and then by the Council in October and November 2024 respectively.

Three key objectives became the guiding principles for the new Regulation: ensuring a well-functioning internal market, promoting sustainability and, last but not least, digitalising construction. As a result, the new Regulation presents both new opportunities, but also challenges for the construction industry. Without claiming to be exhaustive, here are some of the changes that the new Regulation will bring.

Product performance and product conformity in one Regulation

Until now, the Construction Products Regulation has focused on harmonised methods for assessing and declaring product performance, i.e. the contribution of a construction product to meeting Member States' requirements for construction works. In the 2011 Regulation, these were grouped into seven requirements, which will increase to eight under the revised Regulation: (1) structural integrity, (2) fire safety, (3) health and indoor hygiene, (4) general safety and accessibility, (5) sound insulation, (6) energy efficiency and thermal performance, (7) environmental protection and (8) sustainability. This performance approach will continue.

However, the Construction Products Regulation of 2024 adds product requirements for harmonised construction products. These can be set out in Commission delegated acts and specified by voluntary standards. Product requirements cover requirements ensuring appropriate functioning (e.g. battery life), product safety (e.g. electrical safety) and environmental behaviour of the product, although the exact distinction between ‘product performance’ and ‘product requirement’ will not always be evident. 

In the future, there will also be guidelines for the general product information, instructions for use and safety information that manufacturers have had and will have to provide with their products. 

These requirements apply to products for which harmonised technical specifications pursuant to the revised Construction Products Regulation are available. They do not yet apply to products that continue to be marketed under the Construction Products Regulation of 2011.

For manufacturers, the new Regulation will mean additional documentation requirements and the need to keep track of several normative documents. In return, the European Institutions hope to strengthen occupational health and safety and general product safety and, of course, to ensure a better functioning of the internal market. 

From the perspective of the national building authorities, the next point may, however, seem more relevant for the proper functioning of the internal market.

Standardisation: a solution to the problem of incomplete hENs?

The revised Construction Products Regulation gives the Member States more say in the standardisation process. To this end, the Commission will be assisted by a CPR Acquis Expert Group, a group composed of experts designated by the Member States. This group already exists, but was previously known as ‘Steering Group’.

The revised Regulation requires Member States to communicate to the Commission and the CPR Acquis Expert Group the essential characteristics, assessment methods, threshold levels or classes of performance, as well as the product requirements that they consider necessary for a given product family. This communication needs to be made following the publication of a Commission working plan setting out the priorities for standardisation. The Commission is held to integrate these requirements or provide a statement of reasons why it is not possible to do so.

The aim of these provisions is to ensure that harmonised standards meet the regulatory needs of Member States and to support both free trade in the EU and safe use in accordance with the national Building Codes. To promote a well-functioning internal market, it can be hoped that the concept of giving Member States more say in standardisation matters will be realised through the CPR Acquis Process, launched by the Commission in October 2019. Otherwise, one of the key objectives of the CPR review will not be achieved.

The European Technical Approval (ETA) offers manufacturers of non-standard construction products an ‘opt-in’ to the EU single market. The ETA is therefore an important tool for the EU construction industry, especially for innovative, used, green or smart products. To ensure good uptake, it is particularly important to look into lead times. In the future, ETAs can only be issued once the underlying European assessment document has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union. While this is meant to increase legal clarity and ensure availability of notified bodies, it is important not to lose sight of the purpose of the ETA, which is to provide an agile route for innovative products to enter the European internal market.

It should be emphasised that the European Organisation for Technical Assessment (EOTA), which brings together all Technical Assessment Bodies across Europe, and the European Commission are already working on the transition. A large number of EADs are still to be published under the current Construction Products Regulation, while procedural rules for the new CPR are already being coordinated. A pilot project on sustainability assessment has also already been launched, in which DIBt is involved.

Promoting environmental sustainability is a central theme of the CPR review. In line with the European Green Deal, sustainability characteristics will be progressively included in the declaration of performance and conformity of construction products covered by new harmonised standards and new ETAs from 2026.

This means new challenges for manufacturers. At the same time, incorporating sustainability offers opportunities for European manufacturers to strengthen their position in global markets – not to mention the benefits for the world we live in.

In the medium term, the sustainability performance of construction products will also be made available in digital form, as digital product passports.

The concept of digital product passports stems from the Ecodesign Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 and was originally intended as a tool for visualising the environmental performance of products. 

However, digital product passports for construction products under the Construction Products Regulation will provide much more comprehensive information. In addition to the environmental performance, they will include the complete declaration of performance and conformity and other technical documentation. With a view to the digitalisation of construction processes and BIM applications, this step is the right way forward and is important, even if the technical solutions are not yet obvious. The same applies to the call for standards and European assessment documents to be made available in both human- and machine-readable formats in the future. The potential of machine-readable formats and digitalisation across the construction value chain is clear.

The revised Construction Products Regulation sets out important steps toward a sustainable and digital construction sector and outlines a way to address shortcomings in standards to enhance building safety, with the results still to be seen. From DIBt's point of view, the implementation of the new CPR will require a consensus-based approach, a clear commitment to building safety and a pragmatic outlook, the latter of which shouldn't be too difficult given that engineers have a reputation for being ‘practical’.