Regulation (EU) 2024/3110 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2024 laying down harmonised rules for the marketing of construction products and repealing Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 (Text with EEA relevance)

THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and in particular Article 114 thereof,

Having regard to the proposal from the European Commission,

After transmission of the draft legislative act to the national parliaments,

Having regard to the opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee (1),

Acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure (2),

Whereas:

(1) Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council (3) was adopted in the context of the internal market, in order to harmonise conditions for the marketing of construction products and to remove obstacles to trade in construction products between Member States.

(2) Under Regulation (EU) No 305/2011, in order for a construction product covered by a harmonised technical specification to be placed on the market, the manufacturer is obliged to draw up a declaration of performance for such product. The manufacturer assumes the responsibility for the conformity of the product with such declared performance and with applicable requirements. Manufacturers are exempted from this obligation for certain products.

(3) Experience with the implementation of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011, the evaluation conducted by the Commission in 2019 as well as the report on the European Organisation for Technical Assessment have shown the underperformance of the framework on construction products in various respects, including as regards the development of standards and the market surveillance. In addition, feedback received in the course of the evaluation has pointed to the need of reducing the overlaps, removing contradictions and repetitive requirements, including in relation to other Union legislation, in order to provide more legal clarity and limit the administrative burden on the economic operators. It is therefore necessary to update and align legal obligations of economic operators with those provided for in other Union legislation, as well as to add new provisions including as regards market surveillance, so that legal certainty is increased and that diverging interpretations are avoided.

(4) It is necessary to establish well-functioning information flows, including via electronic means and using a machine-readable format, to ensure that coherent and transparent information about construction products performances is available along the supply chain. This is expected to increase transparency and to improve efficiency in terms of information transfer. Ensuring digital access to comprehensive information about construction products would contribute to the digitalisation of the construction sector altogether, making the framework fit for the digital age. Moreover, providing access to reliable and durable information would also mean that economic operators and other actors would not contribute to each other’s non-compliance with requirements.

(5) The European Parliament resolution of 10 March 2021 on the implementation of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products (the Construction Products Regulation) (4) welcomed the Commission’s objective to make the construction sector more sustainable by addressing the sustainability performance of construction products in the revision of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011, as announced in Commission’s communication of 11 March 2020 entitled ‘A new Circular Economy Action Plan. For a cleaner and more competitive Europe’. The Council Conclusions on the Circular Economy in the Construction Sector of 28 November 2019 urged the Commission to facilitate the circularity of construction products when revising Regulation (EU) No 305/2011. In its Communication of 10 March 2020 entitled ‘A New Industrial Strategy for Europe’ the Commission emphasised the need to address the sustainability of construction products and highlighted a more sustainable built environment as essential for Europe’s transition towards climate-neutrality. In its Communication of 5 May 2021 entitled ‘Updating the 2020 New Industrial Strategy: Building a stronger Single Market for Europe’s recovery’ the Commission identified construction as one of the priority ecosystems that face the most important challenges meeting climate and sustainability goals and embracing the digital transformation, and on which the competitiveness of the construction sector depends. It is therefore appropriate to lay down rules for declaring environmental sustainability performance of construction products, including the possibility of establishing relevant threshold levels and classes. Classes of performance for the environmental performance of products should accurately reflect the diversity of products and their state of the art and should allow for the most environmentally friendly products to be accurately identified. Moreover, when referring to environmental impacts, such classes of performance should be understandable, should not be misleading, nor allow for burden shifting.

(6) Similarly, the 2022 EU Strategy on Standardisation set out in the Commission Communication of 2 February 2022, entitled ‘An EU Strategy on Standardisation – Setting global standards in support of a resilient, green and digital EU single market’ identified construction as one of the most pertinent areas where harmonised standards could improve competitiveness and reduce market barriers.

(7) Pursuing the environmental goals, including the fight against climate change and the transition towards a circular economy, makes it necessary to establish, without increasing disproportionately bureaucracy and costs for economic operators, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (‘SMEs’), new environmental obligations and to lay the ground for the development and the application of an assessment method for the calculation of the environmental sustainability of construction products. The calculations should cover the life cycle of the product using the methods established through standardisation. For new products the calculated life cycles should include all stages of a product’s life, from raw material acquisition or generation from natural resources, to its final disposal, including potential benefits and loads outside the boundary limits. For used and remanufactured products, the calculated life cycle should start with the deinstallation from a construction work and should include all following stages until final disposal. The Commission should make available software to perform the calculation, in particular the characterisation factors applicable in accordance with European standard EN 15804 or future applicable standards. Any update of this software should be communicated and should trigger the update to the relevant calculations within one year.

(8) To ensure safety and functionality of construction products and, by extension, of construction works as well as safety of workers and users, it is necessary to ensure that certain service providers, such as fulfilment service providers, online marketplaces and actors providing intermediary services, do not contribute to the non-compliance of other actors. It is therefore necessary to render relevant provisions applicable also to these services and their providers.

(9) To create the necessary link between construction products and the construction works, including buildings, into which they might be incorporated, the notion of construction works should be defined only for the purposes of this Regulation and without prejudice to Member States’ competences to define and regulate construction works and buildings.

(10) In order to avoid innovative distribution models being used to circumvent the obligations under this Regulation, it should be clarified that any supply of a product in the course of a commercial activity, including when ownership or possession of the products is transferred as part of the provision of a service, would be considered as the product being made available on the market.

(11) Ensuring the free movement of kits for construction products on the internal market would support industry competitiveness. This approach would expand market reach, streamline production processes for companies, and improve convenience for both consumers and businesses.

(12) The compliance of construction products with Union legislation often depends on the compliance of their key parts with that legislation. However, since key parts are often integrated into various construction products, ensuring safety and the protection of the environment, including climate, would be better achieved if those key parts were assessed upstream, that is if their performance and conformity were assessed beforehand and independently from the assessment of the final construction product into which they are integrated. Similarly, market surveillance would be more efficient if non-compliant key parts could be identified and targeted. Therefore, it is necessary to lay down mandatory rules applicable to key parts of construction products. The same approach should be used for parts or materials intended to be used for construction products which would benefit from the voluntary application of the Regulation.

(13) Items, such as construction products, their key parts or other parts or materials, can be placed on the market as such or as a set of separate components intended to be used together and should be subject to dedicated harmonised technical specifications. To simplify the application of this Regulation, the items and components falling under its scope should be clearly identified. However, such identification should not preclude the possibility to market the components as construction products when these components are placed on the market separately, as key parts or otherwise.

(14) While keeping a broad scope for the possible application of this Regulation, its application to certain products already harmonised by other Union legal acts should be excluded to avoid regulatory overlap. For the same purpose, it is also important to distinguish between those aspects of the same products which are covered by this Regulation and those aspects which are regulated by other sectorial legislation. This would be the case, for example, for lighting products and electrical and electronic products, which are subject to Directives 2014/35/EU (5), 2014/30/EU (6), 2014/53/EU (7) and 2001/95/EC (8) of the European Parliament and of the Council. The broad scope of this Regulation should however not be interpreted as an intention to harmonise all products which can be placed on the market for incorporation into construction works. Products which are not suitable for harmonisation, for instance due to their relation to cultural heritage, their usage of specific materials which can only be sourced in certain localities or to heterogeneous conditions between Member States, should not be subject to the harmonising effect of this Regulation. This could be achieved through the active choice of not pursuing their coverage through harmonised technical specifications.

(15) Used products subject to this Regulation imported from third countries, should, in the absence of dedicated rules for used products, be subject to the same rules as new construction products.

(16) Construction products placed on the market in the outermost regions of the Union are often imported from neighbouring countries, and are therefore not subject to requirements laid down in Union law. Subjecting those construction products to such requirements would be disproportionately costly. At the same time, construction products manufactured in the outermost regions hardly circulate in other Member States. Therefore, Member States should have the possibility to exempt construction products placed on the market in the outermost regions of the Union from those requirements.

(17) To ensure that a strong link between standards and the regulatory needs of the Member States is maintained, an expert group should support the Commission in the preparation of standardisation requests and other harmonised technical specifications. The work of the expert group should follow a working plan established on the basis of inputs from Member States in addition to overall Union priorities such as EU climate and circular economy goals. In establishing the priorities of the working plan, the Commission should pay particular attention to the replacement of harmonised technical specifications adopted under Regulation (EU) No 305/2011. The Commission should inform the Member States and the European Parliament on a yearly basis about progress in implementing the working plan, including information on the standardisation requests issued, the number of standards proposed by the European standardisation organisations, the average time needed for the assessment of standards by the Commission, and the ratio between standards accepted and rejected by the Commission.

(18) In accordance with the principle of proportionality, it is necessary and appropriate for the achievement of the basic objective of harmonising the internal market for construction products to address the regulatory needs of Member States by defining only the necessary essential characteristics to assess the product performance. The definition of these essential characteristics and the assessment methods applicable to them should provide the less onerous approach with sufficient reliability and avoid duplications and inconsistencies. This Regulation does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve this objective, in accordance with Article 5(4) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU).

(19) In order to strive for a maximum of regulatory coherence, this Regulation should to the extent possible build on the horizontal legal framework, in this case namely on Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council (9). It follows the recent trend in product legislation to develop a fall-back solution where the European standardisation organisations do not deliver valid harmonised standards. When a European standardisation organisation delivers a harmonised standard in accordance with the standardisation request which includes elements that do not satisfy the regulatory needs of Member States, or are not aligned with the Union safety, environmental, circularity and climate objectives, the Commission should revise the standardisation request or make the harmonised standard mandatory with restrictions. A fall-back solution should be possible to apply to harmonised standards which are not compliant with the standardisation request and address a product family or product category which is either not previously covered by a harmonised standard, or is already covered by a harmonised standard applicable for more than 5 years, or is covered by a harmonised standard applicable with restrictions.

(20) Where harmonised standards lay down the rules for the assessment of performance with regard to essential characteristics relevant for the construction codes of Member States, those standards should be made mandatory for the purposes of application of this Regulation as performance harmonised standards, as only such mandatory standards reach the goal of permitting the free circulation of products, whilst ensuring the Member States’ ability to request product characteristics related to the basic requirements for construction works in view of their specific national situation such as differences in climate, geology and geography and other conditions. When pursued together, these two goals require that products are assessed by a single assessment method, therefore the method needs to be mandatory. However, voluntary standards can be used to make product requirements, specified for the relevant product family or product category by delegated acts, even more concrete, following the path of Decision No 768/2008/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (10). In line with Decision No 768/2008/EC, those voluntary standards should be able to provide a presumption of conformity with the requirements covered by them.

(21) The assessment of performance with regard to essential characteristics may require the establishment of threshold levels. Voluntary threshold levels have to be fulfilled in relation to certain applications. Mandatory threshold levels have to be fulfilled as a condition for placing the product on the internal market irrespective of its application.

(22) In order to contribute to the objectives of the European Green Deal set out in Commission’s communication of 11 December 2019 entitled ‘The European Green Deal’, the Circular Economy Action Plan and the Zero Pollution Action Plan set out in Commission’s communication of 12 May 2021 entitled ‘Pathway to a Healthy Planet for All. EU Action Plan: “Towards Zero Pollution for Air, Water and Soil”’, and to ensure safe construction products, safety being one of the goals to be pursued in the legislation based on Article 114 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), product requirements related to functionality, safety, and protection of environment, including climate, are necessary. When setting these requirements, the Commission should address the safety risks and take into account the product’s potential contribution to achieving Union climate, environmental and energy efficiency objectives over the course of their life cycle. Those requirements do not relate to the performance of construction products. Contrary to its predecessor Council Directive 89/106/EEC (11), Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 does not provide for the possibility to establish such product requirements. However, certain harmonised standards for construction products contain such product requirements. Those standards demonstrate that there is a practical need for such requirements on functionality, safety, and protection of environment. Article 114 TFEU as the legal basis of this Regulation also imposes the pursuit of a high level of health, safety and protection of the environment. Thus, this Regulation should reintroduce or validate product requirements. Hence, the power to adopt acts in accordance with Article 290 TFEU should be delegated to the Commission to specify those requirements for the respective product family or product category.

(23) Manufacturing and distribution of construction products becomes ever more complex, leading to the emergence of new specialised operators, such as fulfilment service providers. For reasons of clarity, certain generic obligations, including on cooperation with authorities, should be applicable to all those involved in the supply chain.

(24) In order to foster harmonised practices amongst Member States even where a consensus about these practices could not be found, the Commission should be empowered to adopt, with regard to a limited range of issues, implementing acts on the implementation of this Regulation. The respective empowerments should concern the obligations and rights of economic operators and the obligations of notified bodies.