EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Brussels, 30.3.2022

SWD(2022) 88 final

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

IMPACT ASSESSMENT REPORT

[…]

Accompanying the document

Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council

laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products, , amending Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 and repealing Regulation (EU) 305/2011

{COM(2022) 144 final} - {SEC(2022) 167 final} - {SWD(2022) 87 final} - {SWD(2022) 89 final}

Table of Contents

1.Introduction: Political and legal context

2.Problem definition

2.1.What are the problems?

3.What are the problem drivers?

3.1.Problem drivers

3.2.How will the problems evolve?

4.Why should the EU act?

4.1.Legal basis

4.2.Subsidiarity: Necessity of EU action

4.3.Subsidiarity: Added value of EU action

5.Objectives: What is to be achieved?

6.What are the available policy options?

6.1.What is the baseline from which options are assessed?

6.2.Description of the policy options

6.3.Options discarded at an early stage

7.What are the impacts of the policy options?

7.1.Option A – baseline (no revision)

7.2.Option B - Repairing the CPR

7.3.Option C - Focusing the CPR

7.4.Option D - Enhancing the CPR

7.5.Option E – Repealing the CPR

8.How do the options compare?

8.1.Comparison of the options

8.2.Preferred option

9.REFIT (simplification and improved efficiency)

10.How will actual impacts be monitored and evaluated?

Annex 1: Procedural information

Annex 2: Stakeholder consultation

Annex 3: Who is affected and how?

Annex 4: Analytical methods

Annex 5: The SME Test – Summary of results

Annex 6: Description of the CPR framework

Annex 7: The European technical assessment (ETA) system (the EOTA route)

Annex 8: Simplification provisions under the current CPR

Annex 9: The environmental and climate impact of construction products

Annex 10: Articulation with other existing EU legislation and other initiatives

Annex 11: Interaction between the future CPR and the SPI

Annex 12: Refined indicative options paper, April 2020

Annex 13: Options and elements discarded

Annex 14: James Elliott judgment (C-613/14)

Glossary

1.Introduction: Political and legal context

The construction products industry encompasses around 430,000 companies with a turnover of around 800 billion Euros and a gross value added of around 240 billion Euros. 1 It mainly serves the construction industry, which is one of the 14 industrial ecosystems identified in the updated industrial strategy 2 , with a significant contribution to the EU economy, accounting for 1,200 billion Euros gross value added (10 % of total value added) and 25 million people employed. Both sectors, the producers of construction products and the construction ecosystem as principal user of the products mainly consist of micro-enterprises.

Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products 3 (the ‘Construction Products Regulation’ or CPR) was adopted in 2011 and has applied in full since July 2013. The Regulation’s main objective, like that of the earlier Construction Products Directive 4 (‘CPD’), is to improve the functioning of the single market and the free movement of construction products in the EU by laying down harmonised conditions for their marketing.

Unlike most internal market legislation, the CPR does hardly set any product requirements that construction products would be required to meet. Instead, it mainly sets harmonised rules on how to express their performance in relation to their essential characteristics 5 (e.g. reaction to fire, thermal conductivity or sound insulation) and provides harmonised rules on the CE marking 6  of these products. Since the construction products merely contribute to the construction works 7 – these latter falling within the remit of national competences – the Member States remain fully responsible for the safety, environmental and energy requirements applicable to buildings and civil engineering works. 

The Commission’s July 2016 implementation report on the CPR 8 identified certain shortcomings in its implementation. The report also identified a significant number of challenges going beyond mere implementation and deserving further serious examination and discussion, including issues linked to standardisation, market surveillance and enforcement, and simplification provisions for micro-enterprises.

The November 2016 Clean Energy for all Europeans 9 Communication mentioned the need to unlock the construction sector’s growth and jobs potential by improving the functioning of markets, in particular the still fragmented internal market for construction products. The Communication also highlighted the need to reinforce the focus of the policy on products with the highest savings potential in terms of energy and circular economy. It referred to the consultation process that followed the 2016 implementation report, mentioning that this could lead to a revision of the Construction Products Regulation within the mandate of the 2014-2019 Commission.

To meet this timetable, the Commission initiated a back-to-back evaluation and impact assessment to provide a solid basis for any possible future adaptation. The approach was presented in the inception impact assessment 10 published in June 2017. However, considering the evidence collected through the supporting studies and public consultation, the Commission decided to decouple the retrospective and prospective assessments. The assessment proved to be more complicated than expected: partly due to the complexity of the CPR itself, but also due to the high expectations expressed by the stakeholders and Member States. These combined factors made clear that it was necessary to establish a clear and comprehensive picture of the present situation before identifying all of the key horizontal issues and the assessment of potential options for the future.

Hence, the evaluation of the CPR 11 was published on 24 October 2019 12 . 

In the meantime, several new policy initiatives with direct impacts on the CPR were adopted by the Commission. In December 2019, the European Green Deal (EGD) Communication 13 mentioned the review of the CPR as part of the efforts towards building and renovating in an energy- and resource-efficient way.

Later in March 2020, in the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) 14 , the Commission underlined the objective of addressing the sustainability performance of construction products in the context of the revision of the CPR, including the possible introduction of recycled content requirements for certain construction products, taking into account their safety and functionality.

A similar concept was also included in the Renovation Wave 15 , where revision of the CPR was mentioned as one of the areas of interventions addressing the sustainability performance of construction products. It was announced that the Commission will consider, in the framework of the CPR revision, how sustainability criteria could support the uptake of more sustainable construction products in construction works and foster the uptake of the latest technologies. The Renovation Wave also recognised the need for using low-carbon materials in order to render buildings more climate-friendly.

As announced in CEAP, a Sustainable Products Initiative (SPI) 16  is currently under preparation with the aim of making products fit for a climate-neutral, resource-efficient and circular economy. The initiative will widen the scope of the Ecodesign Directive (EDD) to all products and to provide for the setting of specific requirements linked to a list of aspects set out in the CEAP. These include durability, reusability, the presence of hazardous chemicals, energy and resource efficiency; carbon and environmental footprints, as well as recycled content, while ensuring products’ performance and safety. It will aim to improve products sustainability, to give access to sustainability information along the supply chain, to incentivise more sustainable products and business models. For construction products, SPI goals shall be mainly realised by means of the Construction Products Regulation (CPR) also to avoid double burden. The CPR shall be able to mirror all obligations and requirements able to be set through the SPI, but for construction products.

By aiming to improve safety, sustainability and circularity of construction products, the CPR would also support the objectives of the New European Bauhaus 17 initiative, namely a healthy and safe living environment as well as sustainability and circularity. As announced in the Communication, and following the Communication on the update of the 2020 New Industrial Strategy 18 , the Commission is in the process of co-creating a transition pathway for a green, digital and resilient construction ecosystem 19 .

The Council, in its conclusions on "Circular Economy in the Construction Sector" of 28 November 2019 acknowledged the potential of circular economy in construction activities from an environmental and economic viewpoint and urged the Commission to undertake action to promote circularity further 20 . In December 2020 the German Council Presidency presented suggestions on the Future of the Construction Products Regulation regarding the further development of the current CPR and regarding a revised CPR 21 .

In March 2021 the European Parliament adopted an own initiative report prepared by the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection on the Implementation of the Construction Products Regulation 22 . The Parliament welcomed the revision of the CPR with a view to further addressing barriers in the internal market for construction products and contributing to the objectives of the EGD and CEAP.

2.Problem definition

2.1.What are the problems?

The main objective of the Construction Products Regulation 23 has been to foster a smooth functioning of the internal market for construction products, through providing for a common technical language, based predominantly on harmonised standards. The CPR ensures that reliable information is available to professionals, public authorities, and consumers, so they can compare the performance of construction products from different manufacturers in different EU Member States. Standards provide a common basis for testing and communicating the performance of construction products, allowing manufacturers to prepare a single declaration of performance (DoP) for their products, affix the CE mark and eventually put their products on the EU internal market.

The evaluation of the CPR, as well as feedback received from the Member States and stakeholders point clearly to the underperformance of the framework, hindering the functioning of the single market for the construction products, and so failing to achieve the CPR’s objectives 24 . This, together with the need for the construction sector to contribute to the European Green Deal objectives of transforming towards a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy, are the main underlying reasons for the Commission to consider a revision of the framework.

The framework’s underperformance is due to a number of overarching issues with regard to the functioning of the CPR, as identified in the evaluation. The main problems are:

Problem 1: Internal market for construction products not achieved

The product performance information system under the CPR requires uniform application in order to be efficient. Hence the crucial role of harmonised standards as essential element of the common technical language. The use of standards in support of the CPR is mandatory if they are cited in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU). Such harmonised standards, developed by the European Standardisation Organisations 25 (ESOs), are necessary for testing and communicating the performance of construction products. As such, harmonised standards in support of the CPR form a common technical language that acts as a link between the performance of construction products and the basic requirements for construction works (also called Basic Work Requirements or BWRs) set out in Annex I of the CPR, depending on their essential characteristics and intended use.

When harmonised standards in support of the CPR are cited in the OJEU, products covered by such standards have to be CE marked – this indicates that they have been assessed to be in conformity with their declared performance 26 . The Member States are then obliged to allow the marketing of CE marked construction products, without requiring any additional marks, certificates or testing 27 . Up-to-date and comprehensive harmonised standards cited in the OJEU are therefore essential for the functioning of the internal market, as they provide the manufacturers with a single framework for testing their products, thereby facilitating market access and creating a level-playing field.

In fact, while at the time of the 2008 Impact Assessment, it was expected that the (then) new CPR would lead to increased levels of competition 28 , the statistical analysis could not demonstrate any overall impact of the CPR on cross-border trade for construction products 29 .

To date, the standardisation process at the core of the CPR has been underperforming. In the recent years, draft harmonised standards developed by the ESOs have rarely been cited in the Official Journal (OJEU) mainly due to legal issues, such as contradiction with the requirements of the CPR or trespassing the scope of the mandate/standardisation request. Since early 2019, despite multiple efforts, not a single standard in support of the CPR has been cited in the Official Journal (OJEU). The lack of citation of up-to-date harmonised standards for construction products is considered a key factor undermining the internal market, with outdated harmonised standards causing direct or indirect costs for the businesses, particularly SMEs 30 . This problem was frequently underlined by the stakeholders who observed that the lengthiness of the standardisation process has serious consequences for the realisation of the internal market 31 . The process is too slow to keep pace with the developments in the sector. The resulting standards may then not always be market-relevant 32  as well as do not fulfil the regulatory needs of Member States. Five technical bodies, four business representatives, three public authorities, and one SME representative participated in the semi-structured interviews stressed the need to address the problem of the slow citation of harmonised standards under the CPR. 33   

The CPR provides for an alternative route for CE marking for construction products not covered or not fully covered by harmonised standards – the EOTA route – by providing the possibility for manufacturers to request a European Technical Assessment (ETA). The manufacturer may issue a Declaration of Performance and affix the CE marking on the basis of an ETA. ETAs are issued by Technical Assessment Bodies on the basis of European Assessment Documents (EADs), developed by European Organisation for Technical Assessment (EOTA) and cited by the Commission in the OJEU (see Annex 7 on the functioning of the EOTA route). The underperformance of the standardisation system leads also to putting the EOTA route under strain. More details on this are further developed in section “3.2 How will the problems evolve?”

Furthermore, while the CPR lays down no specific, direct requirements in terms of product safety, manufacturers declare the performance of products with regard to their essential characteristics, which include safety. However, this is not in all cases appropriate. Product safety related requirements are often hidden as product “description” in the mandatory standards and may not cover inherent safety risks. Examples of inherent safety risks for construction products are mechanical risks (squeezing, cutting, slipping), mechanical failure (e.g. locks of escape doors not opening), physical failure (e.g. too wet/too dry wood installed), risks of electric failure (sensibility of fire detectors, risk of short-cuts and thus fire) or risks of incompatibility of substances/materials (glues for floorings and flooring materials) 34 . All in all, inherent product safety (safety aspects not related to the safety of construction works), is not dealt with in a consistent manner for construction products and is largely left to the Member States, despite Article 114 TFEU (the legal basis for the current CPR) requiring to strive for a high level of protection of safety and consumers. Requirements linked to inherent safety defined at national level risk adding to the trade barriers within the internal market for construction products.

Further obstacles to the internal market remain, among others, in the form of continued existence of the national marks, certifications and approvals. 35 This creates additional barriers, e.g. through national requirements for additional testing or national product approval for a product to be marketed/used in a given Member States, and leads to additional costs. The existence of national marks, certifications and approvals is clearly linked to the incomplete character of harmonisation under the CPR, the latter not including a possibility for standards to cover environmental nor safety requirements for products.

In a nutshell, if the CPR remained unrevised, there would be no significant changes to market opportunities as a result of the CPR, thus leaving the potential for European legislation on construction products to stimulate further growth in cross-border trade in the sector unexploited 36 .

Problem 2: Implementation challenges at national level

Despite improved cooperation among market surveillance authorities, it became apparent during the implementation of the CPR that market surveillance activities are broadly seen as ineffective and widely varying in quality and effectiveness from one Member State to another 37 . Ineffective market surveillance nurtures limited trust in the regulatory framework and is thus a disincentive for companies to comply with the legislation, either because there is little risk of getting caught, and/or because companies feel that they are exposed to unfair competition 38 . Insufficient market surveillance and enforcement prevents benefits in terms of opening up markets and levelling the playing field for competitors from materialising fully 39 .

Furthermore, some drawbacks with regard to the functioning of Notified Bodies (NBs) and Notifying Authorities were identified in the report on the implementation of the CPR, indicating that relevant CPR provisions would benefit from more accuracy, e.g. on requirements for NBs (Article 43), on operational obligations for NBs (Article 52) and on coordination of NBs (Article 55).

Problem 3: Complexity of the legal framework /simplification not achieved

Certain features of the CPR differ from the ones used in most internal market legislation. Particularly, the meaning of the CE marking refers to assessing the performance of a construction product instead of its conformity with product requirements. However, it is not clear to several stakeholders (even manufacturers, distributors, importers, professional end users and raw material suppliers) that the CE marking under the CPR is not a quality mark and does not indicate product safety or that a product complies with national building requirements. The confusion created by the misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the CE marking creates significant legal uncertainty 40  .

The simplification provisions (see Annex 8 for details) within the CPR are aimed predominantly at SMEs and include Article 5 (derogations from drawing up a Declaration of Performance - DoP), Article 36 (intended to avoid unnecessary repetition of testing), Article 37 (simplified procedures for micro-enterprises) and Article 38 (simplified procedures for products individually manufactured or custom-made in a non-series process). The uptake of these Articles, with the exception of Article 36, remains very limited. These provisions were expected to lead to a simplification effect, reducing the administrative cost of placing the construction products on the market without compromising the level of safety of construction works. However, various assessments and feedback from the stakeholders 41 show a low uptake of these simplification provisions mainly due to low awareness and lack of clarity of the provisions, particularly with respect to what actually constitutes “equivalent” documentation. The attempt to “level the playing field” for the smaller companies particularly through Article 37 has not been successful. Furthermore, the justification of measures that allow some manufacturers to implement such “lighter” procedures are called into question, considering that this creates uncertainty for end-users, who may justifiably expect that all products bearing the CE mark are subject to the same procedural requirements. 42  The evaluation showed that while some simplification has been achieved by the CPR, this has been less than expected.  

While the expectation for the CPR was a reduction in costs and administrative burdens, the result is in fact increased costs. 43 Moreover, the estimate provided by the Study on the economic impacts of the CPR 44 , indicates that the smallest companies bear the largest administrative burden.

Furthermore, some CPR provisions are insufficiently clear or create overlaps, either within the CPR framework itself, or between the CPR and other EU legislation. As an example, Article 9(2) of the CPR includes a list of information that has to accompany the CE marking 45 , most of which the manufacturer has already presented in the Declaration of Performance (DoP). This situation has been subject to heavy criticism since the beginning of the CPR implementation. The overlap between the information required in the DoP and in the CE marking generates redundant administrative and financial burdens and constitutes a clear inefficiency 46 . 

With respect to clarity and coherence between the CPR and other pieces of EU legislation, there are a number of areas where they overlap and/or are in conflict with each other, including the Ecodesign Directive 47 (EDD) and several other product/technical directives 48 . This creates potential overlaps with respect to the procedures established for construction products, in particular regarding parallel routes for CE marking.

The supporting study for the fitness check 49  carried out an analysis of the coherence of selected EU acts applying to the construction sector. The study considered the legal overlaps between the CPR and EDD (2009), and Energy Labelling Directive 50 (ELD), which may also apply to construction products, and confirmed the inconsistencies in definitions, lack of cross-references and overlaps between the three pieces of legislation. The precise costs of these legal overlaps could not be quantified but may be significant for manufacturers of those specific products. Existing overlaps between the EDD and CPR for specific product categories currently relate to five product categories, namely solid fuel boilers, (solid fuel) local space heaters and space/water heaters, as regulated by Commission Regulations (EU) 2015/1185, 2015/1188, 2015/1189, 813/2013, and 814/2013 51 . In its opinion XII.8.a 52 , the REFIT platform also recommended that the Commission gives priority to addressing the problems of overlapping and repetitive requirements.

Problem 4: Inability of the current CPR to deliver on broader policy priorities, particularly the green and digital 53 transition

With a view to reducing emissions and reaching climate neutrality by 2050, there is a need to mobilise industry to move towards a climate-neutral and circular economy, particularly in resource-intensive sectors such as construction. The building stock, currently responsible for 40% of final energy and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, has a large cost-effective potential to reduce emissions. The European Climate Pact recognised the need for using low-carbon materials in order to render buildings more climate-friendly. The analysis underpinning the European Climate Pact has identified that in order to achieve the proposed 55% climate target by 2030, around 275 billion EUR of additional investments are needed per year in buildings renovation 54 . Construction products will constitute a substantial part of these additional investments, especially as in renovation the share of the construction products (such as insulation materials, wooden engineered boards, metal structures or glass) on the turnover of projects is higher than in new construction. Therefore, a substantially rising demand for construction products can be expected in the next years. Underperformance of the CPR framework could affect the implementation of the renovation wave, highlighting the need for a frictionless and innovative internal market for construction products to fulfil the targets of the EGD and especially for the renovation wave.

Minimising the climate footprint of buildings requires, among others, resource efficiency and circularity. It also requires shifting the focus from the environmental impacts 55 during the use phase to the entire life cycle of the building. In such a holistic approach, the choice of construction products will play a key role. However, so far it is difficult to compare performance of construction products and materials across various circular design related aspects, such as ease of disassembly, future reuse potential, maximum technical service life, whole life cycle cost/carbon, material intensity/waste and reparability 56 .

The climate resilience of specific infrastructure, buildings and civil engineering works is determined by local circumstances and building codes in the Member States, and where relevant other EU legislation. This is therefore outside the scope of the CPR. But in order to properly design, maintain and renovate the construction works also under the changing climate conditions, there is a need to provide accurate information on the performance of construction products.

There is significant mitigation potential to be achieved in the manufacturing of construction products. 57  For instance, for steel the shift away from blast furnace (BF) to electric arc furnace (EAF) (using scrap metal) can lead to sector emissions reduction of around 25-30% compared to 2010. In the cases of hydrogen, electrolysis or CCS and CCU, the reductions can be much higher. If the direct reduced iron is produced via either hydrogen or electrolysis iron ore reduction, it allows for electrification of the most energy-intense step in iron making , leading to reductions up to 85-95%. 58  Similarly, also for the chemicals and cement sector, large emission reduction potential exist.

Other products can even have net-negative CO2 emissions and thus store CO2 in construction. To stimulate the incentives and demand for low-carbon construction products at the construction works level, coherent and transparent information on the climate, environmental and sustainability performance of the construction products is needed, but currently not covered by the harmonised system under the CPR.

In this context, Annex I to the current CPR provides for basic requirements for construction works (BWRs), among which BWR3 already refers to the environmental impacts, and BWR7 refers to sustainable use of natural resources. However, the current harmonised standards under the CPR cover only some elements of BWR3 (e.g. emissions of dangerous substances into the air, emissions into soil or ground water) and none of BWR7. This is because there was a lack of agreement among the standardisers about how to apply these BWRs across different construction products. Additionally, it has not been prioritised, especially as in the past the regulatory needs of the Member States were less obvious when it came to environmental aspects, as opposed to e.g. fire safety or structural stability. The amount of energy consumed, the CO2 emissions and other negative environmental impacts are mostly significant in the process of the production of construction products 59 . In this view, the performance approach can at best indirectly regulate the production stage. Therefore, the harmonisation provided by the CPR and the legal instruments adopted under it fall short of covering these elements. The construction products are thus not yet subject to harmonised assessment and verification of the constancy of performance in this area. This significantly limits the possibilities for the sector to declare, in a consistent and harmonised way, the performance of their products and to differentiate the products with regard to climate, environment and sustainability performances. It also significantly limits the possibilities for Member States to define national requirements or to include criteria in public procurement for the purposes of sustainability objectives without putting at risk the functioning of the internal market.

The CPR is also not fit to take account of the new business models stemming from the progressing digitisation of the sector, such as e.g. 3D printing. Moreover, without a transition of the construction sector towards more digitalised approach to data registration, storage and sharing, the objectives of the European Green Deal risk being undermined as gaps may occur when it comes to the product information, rendering the information available along the supply chain incoherent and not transparent. Under the current CPR, digital information is not available. This will become a challenge particularly as reliable product information, from manufacturing to the installation in the building and demolition will be necessary to live up to the goals of circularity and sustainability, and will be required by other linked legislation (e.g. Energy Performance of Buildings or SPI). Similarly, the current CPR does not encompass the application of a Digital Product Passport 60 , which could be used in digital building logbooks 61 , Level(s) 62 or other tools for assessing and reporting on the sustainability performance of buildings. 

Other issues not linked with the four problems presented above

The following issue has been also identified as important to be addressed in the revision, while not explicitly covered in the evaluation:

As the price of construction materials and output price index have increased, the construction sector is challenged by increasing building costs. At the same time housing affordability and energy poverty are a challenge for many European citizens, as house prices have risen faster than the incomes in most Member States. 63 Overall, these increasing costs make it challenging for the construction industry to build affordable houses for low-income households 64 . At the moment, each building, even when they are just replicated, would need at least one permit in each Member State. A European market for (types of) prefabricated small houses 65  would allow reaching economies of scale to drive down building costs, if standards for such houses would be developed under the CPR (in line with Member States regulatory needs and the local demand). In addition, national and local authorities could potentially grant building permits in a fast track procedure.

3.What are the problem drivers?

3.1.Problem drivers

The main problems above are driven by regulatory failures.

[Drivers for Problem 1] 

On the one hand, the internal market for construction products cannot function properly without up-to-date harmonised standards in support of the CPR cited in the OJEU. Because of their mandatory character and the exhaustive nature of harmonisation under the CPR, 66 when no new standards are cited, the market needs and regulatory needs of the Member States cannot be addressed. Lack of citation is due to a mismatch between the legal criteria applied by the Commission when assessing the harmonised standards under the CPR and the ability of standardisers to deliver requested outputs. In the recent past, new standards could not have been cited in the Official Journal mainly due to legal issues, such as contradiction of the standards with the requirements of the CPR or trespassing the scope of the mandate/standardisation request. Several judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU 67 underlining the role of the Commission in monitoring and management of the standards development have resulted in a more stringent approach of Commission services when assessing draft harmonised standards.

At the same time, under the current CPR, the Commission has no alternative whenever the standardisation process is not delivering. It lacks empowerment to rely on an alternative solution (‘safety net’) when standards are not delivered, or are not delivered within a reasonable timeframe or are considered to be of insufficient quality.

Further, in contrast to the former CPD, under the current CPR standards should not address the inherent product safety of essential characteristics. This also creates “gaps” in the standards, particularly in view of the Member States.

The incomplete character of harmonised standards under the CPR has contributed to a number of Member States setting additional requirements for construction products, including the reliance on national approvals, certifications and marks, in order to fill the “gaps” in harmonised standards and be able to fully regulate the safety of construction works. Member States added further performance requirements not covered by the harmonised standards, thereby being in conflict with the principle of “exhaustiveness” 68  of the harmonised system under the CPR. Several CJEU rulings 69  have confirmed the exhaustiveness of the harmonised system created under the CPR, thereby leaving no room for any other (national) system to deal with the marketing of construction products, within the harmonised sphere, presenting economic operators with additional requirements which add costs and act as obstacles to the internal market” 70 . However, harmonised standards currently cited in the OJEU cover only some of the Basic Work Requirements set out in Annex I of the CPR (serving as a reference for the Member States to lay down requirements for construction works on their territory), or are out-dated and do not any more contain all elements necessary to fulfil Member States’ regulatory needs. The national marks, certifications and approvals are therefore expected to persist, as the incomplete character of the harmonised standards adopted under the CPR prevents the Member States from relying on harmonised performance criteria and assessment methods.

[Drivers for Problem 2] 

As presented in the evaluation 71 , the implementation of the CPR and multiple feedback from the stakeholders confirm that the market surveillance in many Member States is insufficient and so ineffective. Moreover, several stakeholders noted that there is no clarity which organisations are responsible for market surveillance and enforcement and also there is a lack of reporting mechanisms. 72 The main area where stakeholders have identified inconsistencies in terms of implementation was in relation to the level of market surveillance in Member States. 73  While it is largely because of the lack of appropriate resources to tackle the non-compliance effectively, the lack of clarity of the current CPR provisions on market surveillance also plays a significant role. This results in a diverging application of these provisions because of varying interpretations by national authorities.

[Drivers for Problem 3] 

The uptake of simplification provisions 74  under the CPR remains very limited. Various assessments and feedback from the stakeholders 75 show that the driver for this problem is low awareness and lack of clarity of the provisions, particularly with respect to what actually constitutes “equivalent” documentation 76 . The notion of “equivalence” is not explained, the conditions for practical implementation of the simplified procedures remain therefore unclear, with small enterprises and other actors, including Member State authorities, struggling to implement the rules. The lack of clarity is backed by the presence of a very strong support for general clarification (redrafting) of the simplification provisions 77 . The lack of clarity prevents achieving simplification and reduced costs for specific types of products and economic operators, particularly for micro-enterprises/craft enterprises. 78

[Drivers for Problem 4]

The current CPR is not able to deliver on the policy objectives stemming from the European Green Deal and the Circular Economy Action Plan, as these new policy objectives are not reflected therein. In particular, the CPR does not permit to establish product requirements which are not performance-related. For this reason, the CPR is also not flexible enough to contribute to the ambitious commitments proposed in the EGD and the CEAP. The absence of references to sustainability performances in the harmonised standards adopted under the CPR is resulting in Member States unlawfully introducing additional national requirements for construction products, putting at risk the functioning of the internal market and imposing additional costs on manufacturers, particularly relevant for SMEs.

The current CPR is also unable to deliver on new business models, in particular 3D printing. The problem linked to 3D printers used for decentralised manufacturing derives from the fact that none of the three actors involved (the designer, the client, the owner of the printer) is necessarily a manufacturer or a producer in the meaning of applicable product legislation. Consequently, without a responsible manufacturer 3D printed products escape the current scope of product safety legislation. Therefore, the obligations of the CPR, which build on the responsibility of a manufacturer, are not applicable. 3D printed products could be produced in high numbers without undergoing any conformity assessment procedure. This regulatory gap might lead to risks for consumers or other users and create unfair competitive relationships 79 . Provisions related to 3D printing will provide a level playing field to manufacturers using this technology, preventing the creation of barriers to trade or unjustified compliance cost. 

Furthermore, the current CPR does not foresee broad application of digital tools e.g. digital information sharing and digital information flow.

3.2.How will the problems evolve?

As previously explained, under the current framework hardly any new standards or amendments of standards in support of the CPR have found their way into the OJEU, and none since early 2019 (see also the table and figures below). Economic operators cannot realise the full benefits of a consolidated internal market nor rely on a harmonised manner to inform users about the performance of their products. With time, harmonised standards already cited in the OJEU become more and more obsolete (the majority of them has been cited more than 10 years ago) and, in addition, often no longer correspond to the technology used. In the meantime, many of the existing standards have been updated by the standardisers and were made available to manufacturers. However, these updated versions have not been cited in the OJEU as harmonised standards under the CPR because of important legal and content-wise shortcomings. As long as they are not cited in the OJEU, they do keep the status of a European Standard (EN) 80 , hence can be voluntarily used by the manufacturers, but cannot serve as a basis to draw up a declaration of performance and affix the CE marking. This situation demonstrates the willingness of the industry and standardisers to continue developing state-of-the-art standards for the construction sector. However, these standards do not meet the overriding legal framework requirements of the CPR to give them the status of harmonised standards. If this is not addressed, the discrepancy between the needs of the Member States and the market actors on one hand and the reality of the harmonised system under the CPR on the other hand is thus likely to further increase over the years. 

This is also expected to lead to increased burden on the so-called EOTA route 81 , allowing for the CE marking based on European Technical Assessments (ETAs) 82 that are issued based on an EAD. This route was originally intended to allow the most innovative products not (fully) covered by harmonised standards gaining access to the market. However, due to the malfunctioning of the standardisation system, in recent years it is more and more frequent that the EADs are considered an alternative route to (lacking new) harmonised standards, consequently most of the new EAD developments regard products that slightly deviate from the scope of existing harmonised standards. Such practice benefits mainly the manufacturers requesting an ETA (and so not all manufacturers of the same type of products). Such ETAs are developed at a cost to be borne by the manufacturers requesting them. As only the manufacturer having requested ETA can affix the CE marking to the assessed product, this causes unnecessary cost to many manufacturers requesting ETAs, instead of allowing all manufacturers to rely on harmonised standards for CE marking purposes. These costs would not present themselves in case relevant harmonised standards were cited in the OJEU. While recurring to ETAs is not against the provisions of the CPR, such practice leads to a large number of requests to assess draft EADs 83 (see Article 19(2) and Annex II of the CPR) annually to the Commission and this situation risks becoming dysfunctional as well, due to a higher number of complex assessments to be handled by limited Commission resources. Generally, the EOTA route is commercially beneficial for companies with innovative products (or other products not covered by a harmonised standard), however the problem is that the process of developing EADs and on their basis ETAs was not structured to deliver hundreds EADs per year and therefore it has become too slow, and slowness is particularly detrimental to innovative products. In fact, manufacturers want to CE mark and put their innovative product on the market as quickly as possible, and the slow process may sometimes act as a halt to innovation. The fact that a large number of ETAs has been issued (more than 6,900 as of end 2020 84 ), and that the number of ETAs issued each year is growing rapidly, seems to indicate that manufacturers think that this CE marking option is worth the time and cost – in other words, that it is effective for all products not only innovative, despite there being room for improvement in terms of length of the process 85 . This might be especially true in a situation where no harmonised standard is being cited. However, this route to the CE marking brings additional costs for each manufacturer who requests an ETA, compared to the situation if a relevant harmonised standard was cited in OJEU. Moreover, it brings additional burden to the Commissions resources as the number of requests to assess the draft EADs increases. 

The figures below present the evolution of the harmonised standards under the CPR, the European Technical Assessments (ETAs) and European Assessment Documents (EADs) over the recent years.

Table 1: The evolution of harmonised standards, ETAs and EADs under the CPR

Source: a) COM internal data; *publication of 6 standards delayed to early 2019; b) EOTA

Figure 1: Number of hENs offered by CEN and hENs published in the OJEU

Source: COM internal data

Figure 2: Number of ETAs based on ETAGs and on EADs

Source: EOTA

Figure 3: Number of EADs registered as draft and number of EADs cited in OJEU

Source: EOTA, COM internal data

Based on this overview, the expectations are that these issues will become more pressing over time, with manufacturers continuing to use the EOTA route for CE marking, incurring unnecessary additional costs on top of putting under strain the Commissions limited resources.

Finally, new political goals, namely stemming from the European Green Deal and the CEAP, cannot be effectively pursued under the current CPR making it difficult if not impossible to deliver on the objectives relevant for construction products, including circularity and environmental impacts. Although the current CPR could address partially these goals (with the BWR3, referring to the environmental impacts, and BWR7, referring to sustainable use of natural resources), this is hardly achievable with the blocked technical harmonisation system. As consequence, the current CPR cannot address the SPI goals. Without a revision of the CPR, the sustainability aspects of construction products would then need to be addressed under the SPI with a risk of double administrative burden (the same product regulated under two acts). This could also put at risk the coherence between safety and sustainability aspects which is crucial considering the role of construction products in construction works. Also, without an overarching framework to ensure sustainability of construction products in the EU the fragmentation of the EU Internal Market will gain further momentum, as individual Member States will continue their attempts to tackle the described issues at national level.

4.Why should the EU act?

4.1.Legal basis

The first paragraph of Article 114 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) empowers the European Parliament and the Council to adopt measures for the approximation of the provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action in Member States which have as their object the establishment and functioning of the internal market. Article 114 TFEU allows the EU to take measures both to eliminate current obstacles to the establishment and functioning of the internal market and to address barriers that dissuade economic operators from taking full advantage of the benefits of that market.

Through the CPR, the EU has sought to remove these obstacles to the circulation of construction products within the European single market – this being an objective since the adoption of the Construction Products Directive. Article 114 TFEU forms the legal basis for the current CPR and is the appropriate legal basis for its revision.

In addition to pursuing internal market objectives, the initiative aims to contribute to a high level of environmental protection and combatting climate change (Article 11 and Articles 191 to 193 of the TFEU) as it also aims to contribute to the Circular Economy Action Plan, the Renovation Wave and other linked initiatives. However, internal market objectives are predominant, as the absence of adequate and comprehensive internal market rules to regulate marketing of construction products in a way to contribute to their sustainable production and use leaves room for solutions being developed by the Member States or by industries, which contributes to the dysfunctionality of the internal market by generating potential barriers, fragmentation and incoherent approaches.

4.2.Subsidiarity: Necessity of EU action

The deficiencies of the current CPR cannot be remedied by Member States’ laws as the Member States have no competence for revising the CPR framework nor for correcting its failures through national, or even regional, measures. EU action is therefore relevant and necessary. Only at EU level conditions to ensure the free circulation of construction products can be set whilst ensuring a level playing field. In particular, environmental protection objectives and climate performance of construction products are being addressed in different ways in the EU, considering also the different geographical and local conditions, and this variance in Member States' approaches to construction products’ sustainability and safety causes barriers to trade. An envisaged role for the EU should be to promote the development of a competitive internal market in construction products by removing any unnecessary disparities in regulation of performance of construction products, including environmental one, while allowing Member States to reflect their specificities in national building codes. Therefore, coordinated EU action can more effectively reinforce and supplement national and local actions, contributing in particular to construction products’ sustainability regarding climate performance and environmental protection.

4.3.Subsidiarity: Added value of EU action

The revision of the CPR is expected to improve the overall functioning of the internal market for construction products, particularly by addressing the current issues relevant to the standardisation system and eradicating further barriers to trade, such as duplication or overlapping of regulatory provisions either at the EU or national/regional levels. This would in turn increase legal certainty as well as predictability and improve the level playing field for the construction industry. Trust in the entire system would be leveraged thanks to more streamlined market surveillance practices across the EU. Finally, the revision would address the aspects of environmental performance and circularity of construction products, which can only be tackled at the EU level, where the common technical language is being developed.

The proposed measures are proportionate as they will not go beyond what is necessary to provide regulatory certainty while ensuring a high level of protection of safety and of the environment. EU action is therefore justified and necessary.

5.Objectives: What is to be achieved?

The two general objectives of the revision are to:

 1. Achieve a well-functioning internal market for construction products; and to

2. Make the framework apt to contribute to the objectives of the green and digital transition, particularly the modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy.

These general objectives respond to the problems and the underlying drivers, as presented above. They build, on one hand, on the long-term experience gained during the implementation, showing areas of improvement; and on the other hand respond to the objectives of the industrial policy 87 . The industry, operating in the EU market, needs harmonisation, legal clarity, adequate enforcement and reinforced market surveillance in order to benefit from the level-playing field and from the green and digital transition.

These general objectives are complemented by the following specific objectives:

1.1. To deblock the technical harmonisation system;

1.2. To reduce national barriers to trade for products covered by the CPR;

1.3. To improve enforcement and market surveillance;

1.4. To provide more clarity (more comprehensive definitions, reducing overlaps, collision rules with other legislation) and simplification;

1.5. To reduce the administrative burden, including through simplification and digitalisation;

1.6. To ensure safe construction products;

2.1. To contribute to reducing the overall climate and environmental impact of construction products, including through the application of digital tools (Digital Product Passport).

The below figure 4 presents the intervention logic.

Figure 4: Intervention logic

6.What are the available policy options?

The intervention logic presented in Figure 4 illustrates the underlying drivers, the links between the problems the CPR is expected to address, the objectives assigned to it, the CPR’s policy options, and the sub-options. The content of each option 88 (i.e. the detailed measures that form part of them) were analysed and consulted with the Member States, industry and other stakeholders 89 .

Not considered explicitly as an element of the options but essential to the delivery of the preferred option, is the question of the Commission’s administrative setup and capacity. Ambitious solutions can only be delivered if there are adequate resources in place to implement them. The current situation has, for example, demonstrated that delays have accumulated in the evaluation of CEN harmonised standards and EOTA deliverables resulting in legal uncertainty for the market and users, hindering the free circulation of construction products in the EU and impacting the competitiveness of manufacturers.

The social dimension linked to the manufacturing of construction products (social conditions of production of construction products placed on the EU market) has not formed part of the options devised for the CPR revision. Firstly, because of their size and volume, the construction products are predominantly produced in the EU where no concerns linked to the social aspects of their manufacturing are known. Secondly, the envisaged Sustainable Corporate Governance initiative (SCGI) is considering the possible introduction of a general due diligence duty for companies of a certain size, covering human rights and environmental aspects related to all company activities (not a particular product) including the supply chain. Finally, the upcoming SPI considers the possibility of setting requirements on social aspects along the value chain of products.

6.1.What is the baseline from which options are assessed?

The baseline scenario (referred to as “option A” during stakeholders’ consultations) implies no revision of the Regulation. This means the current CPR being in force, together with the entirety of the harmonisation system it put in place, hence including making use of all existing tools already at hand, i.e. Delegated Acts, Implementing Acts and harmonised standards 90 .

The baseline scenario means therefore a continuation of the harmonisation system and its implementation, e.g. dialogue and efforts to provide further guidance and streamlining the standardisation work; actions taken upon the national marks 91 ; promoting the understanding of the CPR; enhancing the market surveillance, through e.g. by recommending effective default market surveillance controls, within the framework of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 on market surveillance 92 .

It is to be noted that the system, under the baseline scenario, would still to a very large extent be the one described in the evaluation and that some of the actions suggested in the evaluation have been taken, but failed to deliver. The likely evolution under the baseline scenario is reflected in section 3.2 (How will the problems evolve?).

Under the baseline, it would be at most only partially possible to address climate and environmental performance aspects of construction products through the CPR (i.e. no reparability, no durability, availability of spare parts). However, this would require a much better performing harmonisation system. Therefore, more likely the SPI would have to address the goals stemming from the European Green Deal and the CEAP for construction products. Certainly, it would take a long time to cover a considerable number of construction products owing to their diversity. This would lead also to unnecessary additional administrative burden, with different aspects of the same product being regulated under different acts and through separate procedures. This could also put at risk the coherence between safety and sustainability aspects which is crucial considering the role of construction products in construction works.

Individual Member States are also expected to compensate the lack of an EU-wide framework for sustainability and safety requirements for construction products by introducing uncoordinated approaches at the national level, thereby further deteriorating the internal market for construction products.

6.2.Description of the policy options

This section provides a detailed description of each of the policy options proposed to promote a well-functioning internal market for construction products in the EU. The policy options, with the exception of Option E, are further able to make the framework apt to contribute (to a different extent) to the objectives of the European Green Deal. The below graph also presents the content of the different options and how they interact:

Figure 5: Policy options

Amid increasing environmental and climate concerns, and particularly in the light of the need to support the European Green Deal, in case of a revision, the CPR provisions could better target the aspects of the environment and sustainable use of natural resources, while respecting Member States’ responsibility for the safety of construction works. In the 2020 survey, 56% of participants in the CPR Revision Technical Stakeholders’ Conference showed preference for inherent environmental product requirements to be integrated into the CPR and its harmonised sphere when asked about the preferred way that construction products can contribute to the transition towards a more sustainable built environment, in the frame of the European Green Deal. It was also supported by several participants that the EU regulatory requirements at the EU and Member States levels on information on the characteristics, contents and environmental impacts of construction products need to be strengthened 93 . The Council and the European Parliament also called for stronger integration of circularity and environmental sustainability into the CPR. 94  

Option B – repairing the CPR

Option B is designed as a stand-alone option aimed at addressing the issues highlighted in the evaluation and can thus be considered as an option of “repairing the CPR”. It covers measures aimed at addressing the problems and objectives identified in previous sections. These issues are numerous and often interlinked, hence the need of a significant revision in order to offer appropriate solutions. Consequently, option B can be regarded as an overhaul of the current CPR.

In the context of option B, the following actions are foreseen:

-To address the challenges of the technical harmonisation system, option B foresees introducing an empowerment for the Commission to rely on a ‘safety net’ (alternative/fall back) solution in case the standardisation system is not delivering standards in time and of sufficient quality. Such empowerment would allow the Commission services to draft Commission Acts containing technical specifications in support of the CPR. A similar approach is also available in other sectoral legislation, e.g. the Fertilisers Regulation 95 , the Medical Devices Regulation 96 , and in recent legislative proposals, e.g. the proposal for the Machinery Regulation 97 . Additionally, the Member States will be requested to proactively identify their regulatory needs upfront, in view of reducing the number of iterations of standards developed. Furthermore, where delivered standards are incomplete or insufficient, the Commission would be empowered to act in such situations, to render the system functioning and efficient. Such a solution would imply that the development process of technical content will take place in a close dialogue and cooperation with the industry and Member States experts and other relevant stakeholders but will be under the lead of the Commission services. These Commission Acts containing technical specifications will have a status similar to the harmonised standards; the manufacturers of products covered by such specification would thus be able to draw up the Declaration of Performance and to acquire the CE marking, allowing to place respective products on the market.  

-Continued existence of national requirements and marks would be mitigated by clearly defining the area regulated at the EU level. In order to respond to new and urgent Member States’ regulatory needs, Option B would allow the Commission to modify by subsequent legal acts the exact borderlines of the ‘harmonised zone’, to quickly integrate those new issues, thus avoiding the needs for dedicated national marks. Transitional provisions would ensure that the harmonised standards cited under the current CPR would maintain their legal effect until they are replaced by new harmonised standards developed under the revised CPR. Furthermore, introducing provisions clarifying competences of the Member States and the interplay between the EU and the Member States’ level, e.g. with regard to unsafe or non-compliant products (e.g. right to sue 98 , minimum benchmarks for market surveillance), is also part of this option. 

-Option B is enabling a harmonised framework to assess and communicate the environmental performance of construction products. This would take place in coherence with a horizontal approach on the environmental performance assessment of products, as currently developed within the SPI. General principles of such assessment will form part of the provisions, while the operationalisation of those principles per product family would be laid down in subsequent Commission acts, via standardisation.

-To support the access to and use of the environmental product data, the setting up of a digital structure fully compatible with the Digital Product Passport (as foreseen by the parallel Sustainable Products Initiative), is of crucial importance. Easy access to coherent and transparent information on construction products will also be furthered through the use of digital tools, notably the Single Digital Gateway 99 by Product Contact Points for Construction and by national authorities.

-Under Option B, the revised CPR would also promote reuse of construction products, particularly to reduce the overall climate and environmental impacts. In particular, the CPR would support the placing on the market of certain used or used and remanufactured construction products, allowing such products to obtain CE marking and gain access to the European market 100 .

-Option B proposes to enhance market surveillance 101 by strengthening enforcement powers and aligning the performance of different market surveillance authorities. The strengthening of enforcement powers would entail the introduction of appropriate sector-specific provisions to supplement the horizontal provisions contained in Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 on market surveillance and compliance of products. Moreover, it would aim to dispel interpretative confusion and facilitate the use of safeguard mechanisms, by creating procedures that are more streamlined (see Annex 12 with Refined indicative options paper for more details). The Commission will also be empowered to adopt delegated acts on the minimum number of checks to be performed by the market surveillance authorities of each Member State, as well as delegated acts on the minimum human resources to be deployed by the Member States for purposes of market surveillance with regard to products covered by this Regulation. These latter will be accompanied by a specific assessment of the resources implications.

-In a similar vein, to further improve the enforcement at the national level, option B foresees enhancing harmonised decision-making amongst all authorities and Notified Bodies 102 , striving for alignment across Member States and across groups of authorities/bodies. The Notified Bodies 103 would also be strengthened with a capacity to assess the correctness of declared environmental impacts of construction products, through either designating specialised bodies or creating a responsible sub-group. Option B also foresees that a revised CPR improves the efficacy of Notified Bodies 104 .

-With a view to improve the clarity of the provisions, option B would aim at enhancing the definitions in order to make them more precise and comprehensible. In this sense, the provisions in the future CPR would also clarify e.g. the situation of 3D printing of construction products, where currently neither the seller of the 3D printing dataset nor the 3D printing service provider is a manufacturer in the meaning of the CPR. It would thus render the revised CPR future-proof and create a level playing field.

-Prefabricated small houses (including built by 3D printing) would also be covered by the CPR. This would allow to build the same (types of) affordable houses in several Member States. 105

-Similarly, overlaps with other EU legislation will be mitigated by introducing collision rules and ensuring coherence; additionally, wherever needed and relevant, the scope of the applicability of the future CPR will be adjusted (e.g. in relation to drinking water installations, currently covered under both the CPR and Drinking Water Directive – see Annex 10 for more details). To clarify the scope of applicability, avoid possible gaps and address the circularity objectives, option B would make sure obligations are extended over the supply chain to suppliers of the construction products and related services 106 .

-As a solution to the lack of clarity around the meaning of the CE marking, option B proposes the introduction of a specific marking for construction products (European Construction Product – ECP) to clarify that the marking refers primarily to performance declaration and not to conformity.

-Option B foresees clarifying the simplification provisions and introducing an empowerment for the Member States to exempt micro-enterprises not trading across the borders from the obligations of the CPR.

-Under option B, with a harmonised framework to assess, communicate and access the environmental performance of construction products and the promotion of the reuse of construction products, some of the SPI’s aims could be addressed in the CPR framework. However, option B does not allow to introduce product requirements. These requirements would need to be set under the SPI risking a fragmentation of legislation.

-Option B addresses the issue of inherent product safety only indirectly, as the unblocking of the technical harmonisation system and an improved market surveillance would improve the quality of products.

Option C – Focusing the CPR

Option C can be described as “focusing the CPR” – or reducing the scope of the application of the CPR, freeing up capacity to improve the quality and comprehensiveness of the remaining harmonised sphere. This option takes Option B as starting point, meaning that it builds on the elements described in Option B. However, in Option C the scope of application of the CPR is then limited in certain areas, depending on the following three sub-options which can be combined:

·Sub-option C1: Limiting the CPR’s application to assessment methods: Harmonised standards and Commission Acts containing technical specifications would include only assessment methods for performance calculation, with no performance threshold levels, classes nor other requirements to be established at EU level.

·Sub-option C2: Limiting the scope of the CPR: the scope of the CPR would focus on the core areas, identified according to three criteria: (1) the coherence of Member States’ regulatory needs, (2) the relevance for the environment or for product safety, and (3) market relevance. These criteria are thus not only applied by the Commission when setting priorities for preparing harmonised standards and Commission Acts containing technical specifications as described under option B, but already by the legislator when determining the overall scope of the CPR. Such an approach would allow to better focus on the regulatory needs of the Member States, the disadvantage being the lack of agility to adjust quickly the scope to respond to new harmonisation, safety or environmental needs. Mutual recognition principles would apply outside the core areas.

·Sub-option C3: Making the common technical language optional for manufacturers: Member States would have the option to offer an alternative path to market access based on national regulations and not relying on harmonised standards and Commission Acts containing technical specifications. In such a case, manufacturers could choose whether they use the common technical language under the CPR or the alternative (national) path to market access. However, if a manufacturer would choose to use the common technical language to assess and communicate performance of its products and affix the CE marking, Member States would remain obliged to offer market access to this product. 

Sub-option C1 alone would relate to the SPI similar as option B. However, under sub-options C2 and C3 a considerable number of construction products would not be regulated by the CPR. In particular, under sub-option C2 less products would be regulated under the CPR than today. Under sub-option C3 the same product could fall under the CPR or national regulations depending on the choice of manufacturer how to market it. Therefore, under C2 and C3 the SPI’s aims would have to be addressed by the SPI directly to avoid different sustainability approaches. This would lead to a complex regulatory structure for construction products with CPR, SPI, national regulations and the mutual recognition principle applicable.

Option D – Enhancing the CPR

Option D, “enhancing the CPR”, is triggered predominantly by the goals of ensuring a high level of safety and environmental protection, including circularity aspects. Option D foresees a process to introduce product requirements dealing with product inherent aspects when needed to protect health, safety and the environment 107 . In this sense, Option D mirrors the expected requirements applicable under the future SPI (see Annex 11 for further details). While it further builds on Option B, relying on mandatory harmonised standards relevant for the assessment of products’ performance, it goes beyond this through provisions that empower the Commission to set, when needed, mandatory (minimum) requirements for products.

Beyond these horizontal environmental and product safety requirements and obligations laid down in an Annex of the CPR, this product-specific requirements would be formulated via three sub-options/approaches (sub-options D1 and D2 could also be combined):

·Sub-option D1: To complement the horizontal environmental and product safety requirements and obligations laid down in an Annex of the CPR, sub-option D1 would formulate more specific product requirements based on the New Legislative Framework approach. For the products or product families concerned, essential requirements would be laid down in standardisation requests addressed to CEN, who would be mandated to develop standards providing technical details. These voluntary standards would be harmonised by referencing in the OJEU. Following the voluntary standards would lead to the presumption of a product's conformity with the relevant essential requirements, but other means to prove conformity would remain possible. As such, in the absence of essential requirements tailor-made to particular groups of products specified in Commission acts, it may lead to lack of harmonised approach towards assessing and demonstrating given performances. Divergence in product requirements between products following the harmonised standards path and products manufactured and tested according to other methods would imply additional effort needed on the side of the market surveillance authorities.

·Sub-option D2: It would formulate product requirements based on the technical specifications approach. Requirements would be included in harmonised technical specifications and be developed as under Option B, meaning either by mandatory harmonised standards (preferred) or by Commission acts containing technical specifications (as fall back). Where product requirements will be defined, the Declaration of Performance would be complemented by a Declaration of Conformity, and both would be combined in one document.

·Sub-option D3: Based on the feedback received during the public consultation and further deeper analysis of the legal constraints, a hybrid solution between sub-option D1 and sub-option D2 has been developed while keeping the core elements of the two other sub-options. These include:

-As in the NLF, the product requirements (“essential requirements”) would be established by an Annex of the CPR.

-However, as the requirements have to target more than 30 widely differing product families encompassing more than 100 product categories, they cannot be sufficiently specific to be applied without legal uncertainty. Hence, they would only become applicable once they have been specified for a certain product family or category by a Commission Act. This is an element stemming from sub-option D2.

-As these Commission Acts may not cover all relevant aspects of application, voluntary standards based on standardisation requests may also be needed to complement them to providing more details and, eventually, presumption of conformity. This is an element stemming from sub-option D1 and the NLF.

Against the ambitions of the European Green Deal and particularly, the transition towards a more sustainable built environment, Option D would be the one ensuring that all safety, circularity, sustainability and climate related aspects can be assessed under the CPR future framework, including the possibility to put forward product requirements. Option D is therefore fully aligned with the SPI and does not require the SPI to prioritise the construction products.

Option E – repealing the CPR

Option E would imply relying on mutual recognition for the internal market of construction products. There would be no harmonisation, i.e. no common technical language, no mandatory harmonised standards, no voluntary harmonised standards either, no basic work requirements for construction works, no obligation to draw up a Declaration of Performance or communicate it, no CE marking, no classes or thresholds, no AVCP 108 systems and no conditions for classification determined at EU level. This would extend to all construction products the situation currently existing for the non-harmonised sphere.

Therefore, under option E, climate and environmental performance requirements at EU level would have to be set by the SPI. As consequence, even without a CPR there would be EU requirements targeting construction products, this time stemming from the SPI.

While Member States would be free to come up with their own national requirements, the principle of mutual recognition would imply that they cannot simply refuse market access, if products from a different Member State do not comply with these requirements. Instead, they would need to check whether the products were marketed in accordance with the national rules applicable in the Member State in which they were manufactured. Additionally, Member States could adopt national regulations relevant for construction works where certain performance criteria could be envisaged for certain conditions (e.g. reflecting climate change risks).

Figure 6: Comparison of options against the specific objectives

6.3.Options discarded at an early stage

Due to an extremely critical feedback and the fact that certain legally mandatory objectives can, in the case of the CPR, not be reached by voluntary standards, the possibility of relying entirely on voluntary harmonised standards has been limited in terms of scope to the question whether inherent product requirements shall be established by voluntary standards, as under option D1, and also be functionally replaced by sub-option C3.

Moreover, the suggestion of a Member State to limit Option B to only a few core elements has been discarded for the following reasons: there are multiple links among the problems and objectives to be addressed. Due to these manifold interrelations, it was necessary to consider potential mitigation for each of the numerous horizontal issues identified. For further information, see Annex 13 on the discarded options.

7.What are the impacts of the policy options?

This section analyses the policy options described in the preceding section, and assesses how they contribute to reaching the specific objectives. It presents particularly the economic, social and environmental impacts, as well as stakeholders’ views. The analysis is quantitative whenever possible, otherwise qualitative.

Regardless of the options, the most relevant stakeholders affected by the Regulation in relation to obligations and compliance are the economic operators (manufacturers of construction products). Also affected is the construction ecosystem (construction companies and employed construction workers as the main users of the products). A small number of construction products is sold in hardware stores. Therefore, also consumers might be directly affected. The options have also an impact on Member States’ authorities responsible for the supervision of the safety, environmental and energy requirements applicable to buildings and civil engineering works.

The main costs for the manufacturers to comply with the Regulation are administrative burden, substantive compliance costs and regulatory charges 109 . While some quantification of these costs was presented in the study 110 supporting this impact assessment 111 , certain limitations such as low response rate and lack of detailed feedback on the nature of the costs incurred, affected the analysis of economic impacts. Wherever needed, this analysis is complemented with a qualitative analysis of the options. All other costs are presented in a qualitative manner due to the lack of data.

The analysis of environmental impacts and social impacts (especially safety) was carried out in a qualitative manner and whenever data was available in a quantitative manner. With respect to the social impacts, benefits could not be quantified due to the missing data on safety incidents and other data needed for a quantification of risks on health and safety with regards to construction products. Therefore, the impact assessment also includes non-quantified social and environmental benefits and drawbacks.

7.1.Option A – baseline (no revision)

Economic Impact

No change in the CPR implies that the costs for businesses associated with maintaining the CPR will remain initially unchanged. The study estimated these costs for manufacturers to be approx. 2.56 billion EUR annually 112 . This corresponds to 0.6% of the revenue of these. Previous studies of the costs for the CPR-related manufacturing sector in the EU estimated the annual baseline costs to be between 2.6 113 and 3.4 billion EUR 114 - so roughly the same magnitude.

These costs are mainly driven by the administrative burden (estimated at 900 million EUR), substantive compliance costs (estimated at 450 million EUR) and regulatory charges (estimated at 300 million EUR) due to CE marking and Declaration of Performance, and compliance cost due to national requirements of around 300 million EUR 115 . These costs serve as the comparative basis for the other options in order to provide an indication of the expected economic impacts of the different options. 

The supporting study also estimated for the baseline a foregone revenue for EU manufacturers associated with the shortcomings in market surveillance of more than 4 billion EUR annually, corresponding to a little more than 1% of the overall revenue. The findings show that foregone revenue due to competition from non-compliant products is substantial, whereas costs related to identifying and reporting non-compliant competing products can be neglected as part of the aggregate result. Insufficient or ineffective market surveillance appears to be the reason for this significant impact on medium and small companies and the reason behind this might be that they have fewer brands/products with smaller volume, compared to large companies with stronger brands and wider portfolio 116 . This makes small and medium companies more vulnerable and exposed to a bigger impact from unfair competition.

In the online survey of 2018 117 , respondents were divided about the future development of these costs under the baseline: manufacturers and national contact points expected a small increase in cost, while testing and certification bodies, market surveillance authorities and end-user organisations expected a small decrease. 

However, taking into account the most likely continuing malfunctioning of the standardisation process and therefore deteriorating conditions for the internal market for construction products, over time rising costs for all stakeholders are expected (i.e. higher cost for manufacturers relying on the EOTA route or more national requirements introduced). This would imply higher costs for construction with less product choice/more national requirements.

Social impact

The current CPR is following a performance-based approach, meaning that no product requirements for construction products are established within the regulatory framework. Consequently, no particular impact on product safety can be identified. Inherent product safety will continue to be dealt with in an inconsistent manner by Member States and potentially in contrast to the objective of removing technical barriers.

This has been confirmed by the 2018 online survey, where under the baseline all stakeholder groups expect either no (28%) or a small positive impact (26%) on health and safety 118 .

Environmental impact

As explained in the problems section, harmonisation provided by the current CPR falls short of covering completely the Basic Work Requirements relevant for environmental impact or sustainability, therefore the construction products are not subject to mandatory assessment and verification of the constancy of performance in these areas. Therefore, at best only a slightly positive environmental impact would be expected from the CPR.

In view of the political priorities of the EGD and linked initiatives, this may create an obstacle for the sector to contribute and to benefit from the green transition, while also impeding the national authorities from setting measures towards use of greener construction products and greening of construction works. As possible solution, these aspects could be addressed, if needed, under the SPI. This however, may result in unnecessary additional administrative burden, with different aspects of the same product being regulated under different acts and through separate procedures. This could also put at risk the coherence between safety and sustainability aspects which is crucial considering the role of construction products in construction works.

Stakeholders’ views

Feedback received during the public consultation and the company survey reflects a broad preference for the baseline (Option A) across most stakeholder groups 119 . At the same time, many of these stakeholders also wished for action to be taken to resolve the issues linked to the implementation of the CPR 120 – such action would require a solution closer to Option B or D.

During the survey on the Refined indicative options paper, in general, participants have shown concerns about the economic consequences that changes to the CPR (the options apart from option A) would mean for the construction products industry. Participants which were in favour of option A, feared that changes would delay the application of the CPR and create difficulties on the market 121 . In a similar line, stakeholders outlined that changes in the CPR would result in the need for economic operators to mobilise further resources at a time when most of them are weakened by the Covid-19 crisis and that most companies in the sector were micro or small sized and changes were costly for them 122 .

7.2.Option B - Repairing the CPR

Economic impact

Option B addresses all the issues identified in the evaluation as shortcomings in the implementation of the CPR. It would therefore contribute to improved harmonisation at the EU level, facilitating the circulation of construction products on the internal market and benefitting their manufacturers and users. In particular, it is expected that market access would be facilitated and the harmonisation of the internal market for construction products would be deepened. At the same time, substantial benefits are expected to come along with improved market surveillance and enforcement. The possibility of introducing, by delegated acts, minimum number of checks to be performed by the market surveillance and the minimum human resources deployed for market surveillance of construction products is expected to significantly improve the effectiveness. Such delegated acts will be accompanied by a specific assessment of the resources implications.

Option B also offers some reduction of administrative burden for manufacturers by empowering the Member States to exempt certain micro-enterprises from the obligations under the CPR, by reducing overlap between the CE (new ECP) marking and the Declaration of Performance; allowing the DoP to be supplied electronically and by combining the DoP with the Declaration of Conformity (DoC).

The estimates show that a regulatory shift towards Option B would lead to a total reduction of 160 million EUR in costs annually for construction products manufacturers, roughly corresponding to a 6% reduction compared to the baseline compliance costs 123 . This impact is driven mainly by a decrease in the administrative burden, substantive compliance cost and regulatory charges in relation to the CE marking and Declaration of Performance, and in substantive compliance cost stemming from reduced national requirements. This may not be overwhelming, but nevertheless a non-negligible expected reduction in costs.

Relying on digital tools, such as a Construction Products database or system will provide the information along the distribution chain, increasing the transparency to the benefit of safety and the environment and save resources of the economic operators, while also ensuring an interface with the Digital Product Passport, ultimately improving the system’s efficiency. Overall, Option B is expected to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and coherence of the regulatory framework.

There appear to be significant benefits that can be reaped from improved market surveillance, with a potential 2.5 billion EUR annually to be gained in terms of revenue, equalling more than half the costs (burden) under the baseline. Notwithstanding the significant uncertainties associated with this estimation due to the small number of observations that it is based on, this would be a remarkable result. Notably, about half of this benefit accrues to small companies, where aggregated revenue gains are estimated to amount to roughly 1.3 billion EUR annually corresponding to 1% of the total revenue for that group 124 .

The above suggests that the improvement in market surveillance would lead to significant benefits, which together with harmonisation of decision-making of authorities and Notified Bodies should also enhance the legal certainty as regards the role and obligations of economic operators and Notified Bodies. This, in turn, could increase the assurance that compliance with the legal rules and requirements benefits the operators and enhance the functioning of the internal market.

Social impact

Improving the market integration of construction products would contribute to enhanced access to these products across different Member States, benefitting the users and consumers. Thanks to the improved legal clarity of the framework and harmonised methods for assessing and communicating environmental performance the users would have access to reliable information on the performance of construction products, eventually contributing to more conscious and informed choices made, particularly in terms of construction works to be executed. Better streamlined market surveillance and enforcement is also expected to improve the reliability of performance declarations, increasing the users’ trust.

Moreover, including in the scope of the CPR also prefabricated (small one-family) houses would allow the creation of an internal market for entire small houses, permitting economies of scale and increasing competition, thereby favourably influencing the prices, ultimately fostering their affordability and deployment. Pre-fabricated houses could also be an important factor when addressing crisis social situations, like in the aftermath of recent weather-related disasters where citizens were in urgent need of housing solutions.

Respondents to the public consultation 125  (see also Annex 2), who prefer option B, primarily expect it to lead to an increase in construction product innovation, construction product safety, and economic actors’ compliance with relevant rules and regulations.

Environmental impact

A harmonised method for assessing and communicating the climate and environmental performance of construction products would contribute to the green transition of the sector and to a better built environment, by providing the relevant environmental data allowing the Member States to assess the climate and environmental performance of construction works, thereby supporting the implementation of relevant national and EU legislation (e.g. the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive) and avoid market fragmentation.

Respondents in the consultation 126 who prefer option B primarily expect it to lead to an increase in the sustainable use of resources for producing construction products and the quality of the built environment in the EU.

Stakeholders’ views

The only stakeholder group preferring option B overall was EU citizens. However, in relation to multiple elements, NGOs and public authorities also prefer Option B, this particularly in terms of improvements on market surveillance and enforcement. Business associations and companies/business organisations do not prefer option B altogether.

During the survey on the option paper, stakeholders pointed out that they welcomed the Commission’s initiative to review the CPR with the aim to improve the functioning of the single market for construction products, but the feared that a revision of the CPR would require additional resources (manpower and finances) from industry to adapting to new procedures and processes 127 .

7.3.Option C - Focusing the CPR

Option C builds on Option B, to the extent there is compatibility between the two. Option C includes three additional sub-options, which can be combined. The impacts of this option can then be considered comparable to those of Option B, where compatible 128 (e.g. improvements in area of market surveillance, legal clarity, simplification etc.).

At the same time, sub-option C1 would mean focusing the CPR’s scope on assessment methods only, with no performance thresholds nor characteristics established at the EU level. This in the end would not improve the degree of harmonisation at the EU level, nor would it be the case when focusing the CPR on core areas only (sub-option C2); further national provisions would emerge, thereby creating possible obstacles to the free circulation of construction products within the EU.

Economic impact

According to the estimates of the study, option C (the three sub-options combined) would lead to a small reduction of 23 million EUR annually in costs for manufacturers associated with the CPR. This corresponds to less than 1% of the baseline costs of 2.6 billion EUR. Benefits (reduction of foregone revenue due to improved market surveillance) are the same as for option B. However, these estimates should be considered with caution as they were calculated on the basis of responses of stakeholders preferring option C and it remains unclear to what extent these respondents reflected on the risk that there could be more fragmentation of the internal market; hence implying limitations on the representativeness of the data.

Option C implies limiting the scope of the CPR to assessment methods (sub-option C1) and to core areas only (sub-option C2). As the harmonisation area covered under the CPR would be more focused (covering less aspects compared to the baseline), further national provisions would very likely emerge, thereby creating possible obstacles to free circulation of construction products within the EU. Consequently, the functioning of the internal market could be impeded. Moreover, concerns about the effectiveness of this option might arise since there could be an indirect risk of having access to products with varying degrees of requirements implemented which could lead to an increased need for market control.

Under sub-option C3, the common technical language would be voluntary, meaning that the manufacturers could choose for an alternative route to demonstrate performance rather than the assessment method prescribed in the harmonised technical specifications 129 (if offered by the respective Member States). Manufacturers would most likely choose this alternative route if the regulation would be lighter and if they only would target the respective market. On the one hand this could have positive impact on SMEs. However, on the other hand the level of protection of human safety or of the environment could be lowered and it might disrupt the internal market.

Social impact

Due to the fact that, under sub-option C3, the Member States would be allowed to regulate an alternative path to market access, a risk exists that users could be negatively affected by diverging requirements followed by manufacturers who choose not to rely on the harmonised standards. This risk would stem from allowing test methods which are less stringent than the ones foreseen at EU level or by refraining from minimum threshold levels, which might lead to endangering the safety of construction products and having a negative impact on end-users health.

Due to differences in national legislations, it is expected that users will not have access to products of the same level of performance on the market.

With respect to sub-option C3 (making common technical language optional), the online survey results show that all stakeholder groups considered this policy option would result in negative impacts on health and safety (39%) 130 . Such negative effects would lead to a risk of more grave accidents, with associated negative social consequences. 

Environmental impact

As this approach would deprive the Commission and the Member States of the possibility to react, in a harmonised manner, to new regulatory needs in relation to environmental or safety needs for construction products, the risk exists that progress on these sub-options will differ among the Member States – due to emerging national requirements – and that the progress towards green and safe construction products will be overall hindered.

With respect to sub-option C3 (making common technical language optional), the online survey results show that all stakeholder groups thought this policy option would result in a negative impact on the environment (35%) 131 . 

Among the feedback received on the Refined indicative options paper 132 , some stakeholders have voiced negative views on this option by stating that the advantage and the relevance of this option for the environment or for citizens in terms of safety and market relevance and the practical meaning of limiting the scope of the CPR is not obvious.

Overall, this option will at most only be able to partially address the goals stemming from the European Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan and other linked initiatives, as regards to construction products. Therefore, it would have to be complemented by the SPI covering also construction products.

Stakeholders’ views

In the 2020 survey on the Refined indicative options paper, only 11% of respondents, including business representatives, companies, technical bodies, NGOs, and public authorities fully or partly supported sub-option C1, 9% sub-option C2 and 9% sub-option C3 133 . In the 2020 company survey, option C was the least preferred revision option, with the share of respondents stating their preferred option was option C varying between 6 and 11% 134 . In the 2020 public consultation, option C likewise was the least preferred revision option, with the share of respondents stating their preferred option was option C varying between 3 and 11%.

Concerning sub-option C3, the company phone survey results showed that this approach could potentially result in very small (<1,000 EUR per annum) per manufacturer cost savings in all size groups and across the sector as a whole: potentially a total cost saving of between EUR 8.5 million annually and EUR 9.5 million annually, a negligibly small amount considering the size of the sector 135 .

In addition, regarding sub-option C3, the general perception of this option was well summarised by a market surveillance authority who stated that “making the common technical language voluntary would not cure the conceptual defects of the CPR, but it would increase uncertainty and create chaos” 136 . In the 2020 survey, where a broad selection of the stakeholder groups took part, the participants noted that “if the harmonised standards become the preferred but non-exclusive means of proof, thus making CE marking optional (not compulsory by regulation), a two-speed system would create confusion for all stakeholders in construction” 137 .

It is clear that the sub-options of this option could create, in fact, new barriers to trade within the European internal market since there might be significant divergence in Member States’ requirements. Among the feedback received on the Refined indicative options paper, many stakeholders expressed that “It is not obvious what the practical added value would be of limiting the scope of the revised regulation” and notably that “All three options outlined by the Commission for so-called ‘focussing’ of the CPR (option C) would significantly impact the existing internal market. Construction products already harmonized (product categories) would be de-harmonised again. This was considered as unnecessary as it would weaken the internal market and adversely affect all stakeholders 138 . 

The overall support for the sub-options of option C is thus very limited as they are considered to weaken the current regulatory system. The sub-options would even less fit into a CPR framework which tries to be more ambitious regarding the European Green Deal goals. In terms of environmental impacts and circularity of construction products, option C would not be effective in reaching the objective and the CPR would not become more focused in the meaning of that option.

7.4.Option D - Enhancing the CPR

Option D, building on Option B but distinguished from other options by introducing product requirements addressing health, safety and the environment, is expected – according to the companies preferring this option in the public consultation – to have a positive impact particularly on safety, compliance and quality of the built environment 139 . Pursuing this option would allow a consistent approach for the environmental assessment of construction products under the CPR and the SPI 140 . As the sub-options only differ in the path to develop the product-specific requirements, the same impact can be expected for all three.

Economic impact

According to the estimates of the study, option D is expected to lead to an increase of approx. 200 million EUR in costs among manufacturers associated with the CPR, equal to approximately 8% of the baseline costs. This is due to an expected increase in costs associated with preparing the CE marking and the Declaration of Performance. The benefits (reduction of foregone revenue due to improved market surveillance) are the same as for option B. However, as the concrete requirements for relevant products (groups) will be defined only at a later stage, through Commission Acts, a more accurate estimation of the costs incurred by the manufacturers will only be possible at a later stage, when developing subsequent legal acts.

As Option D, similarly to Option B, addresses the main shortcomings of the current CPR framework, including the possibility for the Member States to exclude certain micro-companies from the CPR obligations, it would potentially enable further cost savings for micro companies, currently facing the highest compliance burden as a share of their turnover (estimated at 1.3% of turnover on average) 141 .

Social impact

On top of the social impacts described under Option B and relevant also for Option D, the social impact linked to the introduction of product safety requirements would imply improving the safety and protection of end-users of construction products. This decrease in the level of potential risks for users is driven by ensuring that the products are appropriately assessed before they reach them.

With respect to this positive social impact of policy option D on safety (improving the safety and protection of end-users), it is important to note that SMEs in the construction contractors sub-sector employing less than 250 people account for approximately 91% of all employees 142 . This suggests that the majority of benefits in terms of cost savings from a reduction in risks of accidents accrue to SMEs. This is crucial as in some Member States, national authorities reported that safety incidents tend to be higher among SMEs 143 . In general, by improving the product safety, thereby contributing to protecting workers from accidents and health risks, the legislation makes a positive contribution to improving the human capital basis of the sector 144 .

Environmental impact

In response to the European Green Deal objectives Option D is expected to address these effectively, rendering the revised CPR framework future-proof as the revised CPR will be able to deliver on broader policy priorities, particularly the green and digital transition. Environmental impacts of Option B, i.e. offering a harmonised approach for assessing and communicating the climate and environmental performance of construction products and providing access to reliable and comprehensive data in terms of environmental performance (through the Digital Product Passport) contribute to the Circular Economy Action Plan, Renovation Wave and other linked initiatives, and are relevant also for Option D. Additionally, Option D would ensure that protection of climate and environment and safety would be safeguarded, by foreseeing a possibility of introducing product requirements. It is therefore apt to reflect the framework expected to be introduced for other products under the SPI (for more details, see Annex 11 on the interaction between the future CPR and SPI).

As this option is the only one fully suited to effectively address the goals stemming from the European Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan and other linked initiatives, in the context of construction products, it can ensure the full support towards circular use of products and materials and ameliorating the built environment. Option D allows for synergies with other initiatives, including the SPI, EPBD or transition pathways for the construction ecosystem.

Stakeholders’ views

In the company survey and the public consultation, Option D gained relatively low support of 13% and 16% of consulted stakeholders respectively. There was, however, a variation among different groups of stakeholders, with NGOs preferring Option D (sub-option D2) as compared to the other options. In both surveys, there was a stronger preference for introducing construction product requirements via the New Legislative Framework approach (sub-option D1) than via the Technical Specifications approach (sub-option D2). 145

7.5.Option E – Repealing the CPR

Economic impact

The stakeholders expect a large negative impact due to lacking CPR-based market surveillance. Repealing the CPR would also imply limited free circulation of construction products compared to the baseline. The objectives of protection of safety or environment relevant for construction products could not be pursued in a harmonised manner without the CPR framework being in place. Correspondingly, the main economic impact of a repeal of the CPR is expected to be a deterioration of the market surveillance situation. A substantial majority of respondents consider that repealing the CPR would result in increased fragmentation of the market and in Member States putting up new or strengthened barriers 146 . The interviewed stakeholders state that insufficient market surveillance and enforcement prevents benefits in terms of opening up markets and levelling the playing field for competitors from materialising fully 147 . Also, a deterioration in the market surveillance situation can lead to market distortion and mistrust in the system among economic operators. A lack of trust is one of the many obstacles that could lead to negative impacts on cross-border trade.

In the 2018 study, this option was assessed negatively with regard to all assessment parameters. Most stakeholders (companies, technical bodies, public authorities) think it would produce negative impacts, resulting in compliance cost increases and a reduction in market opportunities for companies. While the impact on product quality is uncertain, respondents believe the repeal would be detrimental for product information, surveillance and enforcements costs 148 . Many respondents stated in free text that a repeal of the CPR would lead to a collapse of the EU Single Market for construction products 149 . In the online survey, one market surveillance authority said that “the fact that mutual recognition didn't work was the very reason why the CPD was introduced in 1989; mutual recognition was not strong enough a tool to eliminate barriers to trade.” 150  

Based on the company phone survey, it is estimated that this option could lead to negligible cost increases (<1,000 EUR per annum) per manufacturer for manufacturers across all size groups. For the manufacturing sector, option E could result in cost increases of between EUR 5.6 million and EUR 6.4 million per annum (not reflecting the costs of the market fragmentation). 151 However, the few respondents who prefer variants of option E expect it primarily to lead to a small decrease in administrative burden 152 .

Social Impact

The results from the online survey confirm that all stakeholder groups consider this option to produce either very little change (i.e. product quality) or have a negative impact on health and safety (72%) 153 . Negative effects on health and safety would manifest in a higher number of grave accidents, with associated negative social consequences. Further, the deterioration in the level of safety might increase the risk of safety hazards for end users.

Environmental impact

The results from the online survey confirm that all stakeholder groups consider this option to produce either very little change (i.e. product quality) or have a negative impact on the environment (71%) 154 .

Ultimately, among the feedback received on the Refined indicative options paper, many stakeholders, including business representatives, companies, technical bodies, NGOs etc., have voiced their negative views such as: “repealing the CPR, in addition to being a significant step back for the safety of European Citizens, would be a missed opportunity to raise to the challenges of the European Green Deal”. Therefore, the environmental sustainability would have to be addressed by the SPI.

Stakeholders’ views

Among all responses received during the public consultation and the company survey, option E was considered as preferred option by the lowest share of respondents, in all stakeholder groups and across all sub-options 155 . This reflects the adverse consequences to which repealing the CPR could potentially lead.

Further, stakeholders expected that option E would have limited or no impact on key parameters except for some expecting a reduction in the administrative burden (although it should be kept in mind that this is based on replies from respondents preferring option E). Moreover, it is important to acknowledge that companies who have cross-border trade would have to comply with the national legislations of each country they trade with, resulting in an increase in administrative burdens for them. However, while administrative burdens directly associated with the CPR would disappear, other cost factors (or even market losses) were considered likely to emerge.

8.How do the options compare?

8.1.Comparison of the options

This chapter provides an overview of the effectiveness and efficiency of the policy options with regards to the specific objectives that triggered the initiative.

The three key assessment criteria are understood as follows 156 :

·Effectiveness: the degree to which the policy options allow achieving the general and specific objectives;

·Efficiency: the likely costs and benefits of the policy options on different stakeholders;

·Coherence: the fitting of the goals of other legislations and initiatives.

Table 2 summarises the effectiveness of the policy options in terms of achieving the specific objectives.

Table 2: Effectiveness of the policy options against the specific objectives

Legend: 0- almost no impact/no change; + reduced positive impact; ++ positive impact; ++ very positive impact; - reduced negative impact; -- negative impact; --- very negative impact

The following Table 3 presents an overview of the policy options in terms of effectiveness (how each option achieves the specific objectives), efficiency (cost-benefit analysis) and coherence with other pieces of the EU law.

Table 3: comparison of the policy options against the Better Regulation criteria

Legend: 0- almost no impact/no change; + reduced positive impact; ++ positive impact; ++ very positive impact; - reduced negative impact; -- negative impact; --- very negative impact

Effectiveness

In terms of harmonisation and reduction of national barriers to trade, a fully operational CPR under Option B will provide better clarification of the scope of harmonised sphere at the EU level, address the current underperformance of standardisation system and prevent national requirements. In this sense it outperforms Option C (where the CPR would cover less aspects than under option B, hence more national provisions would create obstacles), but is less effective than Option D which, on top of addressing the current issues also adds product requirements; as such, Option D will provide an even stronger level of harmonisation, contributing to improved free circulation of construction products. Option E would eliminate the harmonisation as no regulatory framework at EU level would be set.

In terms of market surveillance and enforcement, simplification and legal clarity Options B, C and D have a similar degree of effectiveness, because they build on the same set of measures as explained previously for Option B. In particular, option D has the highest degree of effectiveness, followed by option B, and then option C. Option E would imply repealing of the regulatory framework at the EU level, hence addressing the above specific objectives is not feasible.

In terms of contributing to the reduction of the climate and environmental impact of construction products, Option D offers the possibility to create inherent environmental product requirements, making the regulatory system complete: construction works related environmental performance aspects can already now be regulated by thresholds, but not the inherent environmental aspects. Effectiveness of this option in terms of environment is thus highest, as compared with other options.

Moreover, the impacts in terms of effectiveness of option D in the context of pursuing the political objectives set by initiatives related to sustainability of products should be considered as very significant, even against possible costs related to the implementation of this option. As construction products absorb more than 40% of all raw materials in terms of quantity, the revised CPR will have a systemic impact on the European Green Deal and Circular Economy Action Plan as such. This not just by a possibility to determine a minimum quota of recycled materials to be used, but also by many other fine-tuned, product-specific requirements still to be developed under the future Commission acts and technical specifications. The uptake of progressive, environment-friendly regulatory solutions in the CPR is thus crucial for the success of the EGD and the CEAP.

In contrast, option A can hardly address the sustainability aspects, option C only partly. Option B is less effective than option D as it does not foresee the possibility of introducing inherent product requirements. Therefore, options A, B and C would rely on the SPI taking over – at least partially – to reach the same ambition in a less effective way.

In terms of ensuring safe construction products, Option D offers the possibility to create inherent safety product requirements, making the regulatory system complete: safety performance aspects related to construction works can already now be regulated by thresholds (e.g. smoke detectors), but not the inherent safety aspects (e.g. need for an anti-entrapment device in a door). Effectiveness of this option in terms of product safety is thus highest, as compared with other options.

Efficiency

In terms of costs and benefits, the study supporting the Impact Assessment estimated that Option B is most efficient. This estimate should be considered with a great degree of caution as it was based on the feedback from consulted stakeholders and often limited in terms of representativeness, due to limited number of responses received. Negative impacts in terms of efficiency of Option D were considered to be driven particularly by the expected increase of costs incurred due to the regulatory change from baseline to Option D. However, it needs to be stressed that such concrete costs cannot be estimated at this stage yet, because concrete product requirements would still need to be developed, where relevant, at a later stage. A targeted assessment of the costs and benefits will only be feasible at that point. Furthermore, the study did not take account of the SPI. For addressing the climate and environmental impact of construction products, option D is much more efficient than a combination of the other options with the SPI. Therefore, option D is considered as the most efficient option.

Finally, it needs to be stressed that such concrete costs cannot be estimated at this stage yet, because concrete product requirements would still need to be developed, where relevant, at a later stage. A targeted assessment of the costs and benefits will only be feasible at that point.

Coherence

In terms of coherency with other existing EU legislation, and as explained in the Problems section (Problem 3), without any intervention, overlaps will continue to exist and are expected to increase, particularly in relation to the future SPI. In addition, the CPR framework could hardly address the goals of the EGD. Option B foresees significant improvements in these respects, by addressing the scope of harmonisation, providing for clear definitions and collision rules, thereby eliminating overlaps, except with the SPI, or loopholes. It would also bring the CPR more in line with the EGD. Option D, which builds on the measures foreseen in Option B, responds favourably to the objectives of the EGD and CEAP, by anticipating, and – where relevant – contributing to the actions stemming from linked policy initiatives. It becomes more pressing to avoid overlapping requirements in the context of the SPI, expected to provide for the setting of specific requirements linked to a list of aspects set out in the CEAP. Thus, Option D offers the most coherent approach for a future-proof CPR. For more details on the CPR-SPI interface, see Annex 11.

8.2.Preferred option

In light of the analysis in the previous chapters, Option D is considered the preferred option, in particular in view of the objectives to be achieved. Option D provides the necessary means to achieve the objectives satisfactorily by addressing the main shortcomings of the current CPR framework, including standardisation, national barriers to trade, ineffective market surveillance, lack of clarity and of simplification; while at the same time, it is the only one fully suited to effectively address the goals stemming from the European Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan and other linked initiatives, in the context of construction products.

The very significant benefits and effectiveness of the Option D, as described above, substantiate its choice as the preferred one. Option D represents the approach with the highest degree of effectiveness and coherence, even though it may lead to additional costs for the economic operators. The additional costs would be justified by the positive impacts on economic operators, consumers and the environment in the long run. These costs cannot be quantified at this stage but will need to be considered when developing the technical specifications.

As explained in the previous section, Option D builds on Option B, including the need of mandatory harmonised standards for assessment of products’ performance. A complementary element, clearly distinguishing it from option B, is the possibility of setting mandatory product requirements in the CPR.

Out of the three sub-options D3 is the preferred one as it can be seen as enhancement of the sub-options D1 and D2. The approach is in practice similar to the one of the EDD and of the future SPI.

While this preferred option may bring about some additional costs for the manufacturers (see section 7.4), it is expected that in other areas it will generate costs savings. In particular, given the expected better performing standardisation process supporting the CPR framework, potential cost savings in terms of administrative burdens would occur. The decrease in ambiguity in the provisions should allow cost savings due to reduced overlaps and duplication of obligations with other EU legislation. A small decrease in regulatory charges and compliance costs is expected as a result of the clarification and enhancement of the harmonisation scope at the EU level. Altogether, Option D is expected to result in a net reduction of administrative burden of approx. 180 million EUR (for more details, see Annex 3). Finally, due to the anticipated better market surveillance and enforcement, a reduction of foregone revenue of roughly 2.5 billion EUR for manufacturers of compliant products is expected.

9.REFIT (simplification and improved efficiency)

The assessment of the economic impacts demonstrates several cost savings with respect to the preferred option, namely option D. It is expected that the costs savings would be for manufacturers and would include a decrease of administrative burden, regulatory charges and compliance costs. Furthermore, for manufacturers falling under the simplification provisions, costs savings are also expected due to decrease in the level of ambiguity. These costs savings could potentially balance to some extent the costs which are expected with this option. This is important for manufacturers in the long run.

Table 4: REFIT Cost Savings – Preferred Option(s)

10.How will actual impacts be monitored and evaluated?

Policy monitoring and evaluation going forward related to the revision of the CPR would be centred around the core issues to be addressed by the revision. The successful implementation of the revised Construction Product Regulation depends on several factors. This chapter proposes several indicators to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the changes. More indicators could be formulated depending on the contents of the final revision of the CPR, if any.

Monitoring of the implementation of the (revised) CPR would start right after the adoption of the CPR, focused on its implementation. Table 5 presents suggested key indicators for monitoring and evaluation.

The starting point for indicators in the area of standardisation is the number of references of harmonised standards (hENs) cited in the OJEU out of the total number of hENs submitted to the Commission for citation. This indicator allows to calculate the percentage of citation and to better monitor and identify the reasons for non-citations or withholding citation, if any are still present. Also, an improvement of data completeness will be to add the number (or share) of rejections by the Commission of proposed standards. Moreover, the average length of the process from issuing a standardisation request by the Commission to delivery of draft standards by CEN is important as it will allow to assess whether one of the problems identified by stakeholders of the standardisation process, namely lengthiness of the standardisation process, is solved/improved. This can also be compared with the work in EOTA using similar indicators.

Another indicator of success would be data for environmental and product safety information, and environmental and product safety requirements incorporated in technical specifications. The number of technical specifications (or product families) with environmental information and requirements, and their relative importance in terms of environment is a crucial factor to evaluate the extent to which environmental consideration has increased as a result of the review of the CPR.

To measure an improved market surveillance the Commission could consult the Member States. A successful implementation would be supposed to lead first to detecting more non-compliant construction products and then to a reduction of this number. An indicator for monitoring could be the level of trust among economic operators, for which an evaluation after four to five years could provide information through stakeholder consultations. Relevant stakeholders could be consulted to evaluate the impact of the revision, in particular with respect to market surveillance.

An expected impact of the preferred option is an improvement of the functioning of the internal market for construction products. This should have a positive impact on cross-border trade within the EU. Accordingly, the data on trade values and trade volumes can be compared to the figures before the review of the CPR and to the production data.

Table 5: Suggested key indicators including source and timing of data collection

Evaluation

It is proposed that an evaluation of a revised CPR should take place within 4 to 5 years after the date of entry into force.

Such an evaluation should, in particular, assess the effectiveness of the revised legislation – with a special, but not exclusive, focus on the issues covered by the suggested indicators above - as well as its efficiency, relevance, coherence and EU value added. Options for further modification, update or enhancement of requirements should be considered by the evaluation, as is standard for any full-scale evaluation.

Annex 1: Procedural information

1.    Lead DG, Decide Planning/CWP references

Lead DG: Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.

Decide Planning reference: PLAN/2017/972

2.    Organisation and timing

The European Commission announced in the ‘Clean Energy for All Europeans’ Communication of 30 November 2016 that the then ongoing consultation process with stakeholders (in particular the technical platforms launched as a follow-up to the CPR implementation report of 7 July 2015) might possibly lead to revision of the CPR. The CPR review was initially planned as a back-to-back evaluation and impact assessment when included in the planning on 29 March 2017.

This approach was presented in the inception impact assessment, published in June 2017.

However, considering the evidence collected through the supporting studies and public consultation, the Commission decided to decouple the retrospective and prospective assessments. In fact, the assessment proved to be more complicated than expected. This was partly due to the complexity of the CPR itself, but also due to the high expectations expressed by the stakeholders and Member States, in particular the political pressure caused by a case pending at that time at the European Court of Justice . These combined factors made clear that it was necessary to establish a clear and comprehensive picture of the present situation before identifying all of the key horizontal issues and the assessment of potential options for the future.

The evaluation of the CPR was published on 24 October 2019, together with the Report on the relevance of the tasks of the European Organisation for Technical Assessment (EOTA).

Two dedicated meetings with the Member States took place on 4 March 159 and 22 September 2020 160 . A so-called “Refined indicative options paper”, aimed at presenting the options for a potential revision of the CPR, was published on 8 April 2020 161 (see Annex 12). A survey on it took place between 15 April and 31 August 2020 162 . A revised Inception Impact Assessment was published on 17 June 2020 163 . Feedback on this IIA was gathered in the period between 17 June 2020 and 19 August 2020. Dedicated Q&A sessions for stakeholders were organised on 22 June, 6 July and 20 July 2020. A technical stakeholders’ conference on the CPR revision was organised on 7 September 2020 164 . A public consultation followed in the period between 4 September 2020 and 25 December 2020.

An inter-service steering group (ISSG) was set up in September 2019 to follow the process of developing a study 165 launched in support of the Impact Assessment and the preparation of the Impact Assessment itself. The group included the following services: Secretariat-General, Legal Service, DG Energy, DG Environment, DG Climate Action, DG Employment, social affairs and inclusion, DG Competition, DG Justice and consumers, DG Research and innovation, Joint Research Centre.

The ISSG met on 25 September 2019 (kick-off meeting), 21 November 2019 (inception report), 19 February 2020 (first progress report), 8 December (second progress report), 5 February 2021 (first findings report), 29 April 2021 (draft final report), 19 May 2021 (draft Impact Assessment), 15 June 2021 (Impact Assessment) and 30 November 2021 (revised IA).

The ISSG was consulted on the consultation strategy (25 June 2020) and on the questions for the study validation workshop (4 February 2021). The validation workshop took place on 24 March 2021.

3. Consultation of the RSB

An upstream meeting took place on 17 March 2021.

Feedback from the Regulatory Scrutiny Board (RSB) was sought on the way to construct and compare the policy options as well as more general issues related to objectives, impacts and evidence.

The Impact Assessment was discussed at a meeting with the RSB on 22 July 2021. Following the negative opinion of the RSB from 26 July 2021, changes were made to the Impact Assessment report in order to reflect the recommendations of the Board. Table 6 below presents an overview of the RSB's comments and how these have been addressed.

The revised Impact Assessment was resubmitted to the RSB on 16 December 2021. The RSB delivered a positive opinion with reservations on 26 January 2022. Table 7 below presents an overview of the RSB’s comments and how these have been addressed.

Table 6: RSB recommendations I and how they have been addressed

Table 7: RSB recommendations II and how they have been addressed

4. Evidence, sources and quality

Available report and studies, in particular:

- Copenhagen Economics, Danish Technological Institute and Office for Economic Policy and Regional Development Ltd. (2021). Study supporting the Impact Assessment for the CPR revision, Final report. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/20f672b4-1503-11ec-b4fe-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

- European Commission (2019b). Commission Staff Working Document SWD(2019)1770 - Evaluation of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products and repealing Council Directive 89/106/EEC. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/37827 .

- European Commission (2019c). COM(2019) 800 Final. Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the outcome of the evaluation of the relevance of the tasks set out in Article 31(4) that receive Union financing pursuant to Article 34(2) of Regulation (EO) No 305/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 March 2011 laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products and repealing Council Directive 89/106/EEC. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legalcontent/EN/TXT/?qid=1571917158693&uri=COM:2019:800:FIN .

- European Commission (2020a). Refined indicative options for the review of the Construction Products Regulation. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/40762 .

- European Commission (2020c). Review of the Construction Products Regulation (CPR) - Survey on the Option Paper, April-August 2020 – results. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/43103 .

- VVA, JIIP, Danish Technological Institute and GDCC (2018a). Supporting study for the Review of the Construction Products Regulation: Evaluation. European Commission. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/e771a8cf-ed42-11e8-b690-01aa75ed71a1/language-en .

- VVA, JIIP, Danish Technological Institute and GDCC (2018b). Supporting study for the Review of the Construction Products Regulation: Impact Assessment. European Commission. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/57fd5ffaed41-11e8-b690-01aa75ed71a1/language-en .

Use was made of expert advice, in particular through the following channels:

- The CPR review technical platforms: six meetings were held between March and September 2020, with Member State representatives, business associations, companies, technical bodies and testing bodies. The following topics were addressed: standardisation, simplification, information needs, coexistence of EU and national systems, environmental requirements and the future of EOTA 166 .

- A validation workshop gathered 225 participants on 24 March 2021, including Member State representatives, business associations, companies, technical bodies and testing bodies. The workshop presented and validated the draft findings and conclusions from the study.

- Economisti Associati, Milieu and CEPS, with contributions from BPIE and DBRI (2016) Supporting study for the Fitness Check on the construction sector: EU internal market and energy efficiency legislation. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/19343

- RPA(2016). Supporting Study for Fitness Check on the Construction Sector – The Second Phase on EU Environment, Health and Safety Legislation. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/19661  

- VVA, DTI and TNO (2016). Economic Impacts of the Construction Products Regulation. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/20903

- Refit platform recommendations. Available at: https://wayback.archive-it.org/12090/20200221170910/https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/evaluating-and-improving-existing-laws/refit-making-eu-law-simpler-and-less-costly/refit-platform/refit-platform-recommendations-and-other-work_en

- BRE, Ecorys, and Vito (2016), Supporting study for the evaluation of the relevance of EOTA tasks. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/62e85006-d313-11e6-ad7c-01aa75ed71a1

- RPA(2015). Analysis of the implementation of the Construction Products Regulation. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d3449aa6-8775-11e5-b8b7-01aa75ed71a1

- Centre for Industrial Studies (2017). Cross-border trade for construction products. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/27301  

- Centre for Industrial Studies (2020). EADs and ETAs: Added value to the construction sector. Available at: https://www.eota.eu/sites/default/files/uploads/EOTA%20positions/2020-csil-eota-report-0109.pdf

Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the implementation of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 March 2011 laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products and repealing Council Directive 89/106/EEC, COM/2016/0445 final, 7.7.2016.

Judgement of 27 October 2016, James Elliot Construction, C-613/14, ECLI:EU:C:2016:821, http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=184891&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=5620375 .

Judgement of 13 June 1958, Meroni v High Authority, C-10/56, ECLI:EU:C:1958:8, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:61956CJ0010&from=EN .

Judgement of 5 September 2012, Parliament v Council, C‑355/10, ECLI:EU:C:2012:516, paras. 64-82, http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=126363&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=935739 . 

Judgement of 22 January 2014, UK v Council and Parliament, C-270/12, ECLI:EU:C:2014:18, paras. 41-55, http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=146621&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=5618770 . 

Report on the implementation of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products (the Construction Products Regulation), 2021, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2021-0012_EN.html .

Annex 2: Stakeholder consultation

In the context of the impact assessment study on the revision of the Construction Products Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 305/2011) various consultation activities were conducted between October 2019 and December 2020. The aim was to assess the potential areas of revision and the impacts of the suggested policy options on different stakeholder groups. This Annex presents the results of the consultation activities carried out.

The consultation activities 167 included a horizontal online survey (survey on horizontal issues), a company survey and a public consultation. The horizontal survey targeted selected experts and aimed at identifying how to address the various horizontal issues identified during the evaluation of the CPR in order to collect input to be used for the further refinement of the draft options. With respect to the company survey, the survey targeted companies relevant to the construction products market and therefore the questionnaire was sent out to economic operators in the construction products sector. Concerning the public consultation, the consultation was publicly accessible, thus also open to companies, as well as any other types of respondents.

In addition, two ad hoc meeting with Member States’ experts on the Review of the CPR took place in the year 2020. The goal of the first meeting in March was to discuss this process and to answer questions about the options paper distributed ahead of the meeting. In the second meeting, in September, the Commission services aimed at giving the floor to Member States’ experts to collect their views on the four main agenda topic: Scope and relationship with other EU law, Harmonised sphere, national law and information needs, Annex I (basic requirements for construction works), Environmental requirements.

1.OVERVIEW OF THE PARTICIPANTS

For all consultation activities, the main stakeholder groups addressed were:

·European technical bodies and associations (EOTA and “other” incl. consumer and standardisation organisations) and other stakeholders involved in standardisation;

·Companies/manufacturers, importers and distributors;

·Consumer associations;

·European/international organisations (industry associations);

·Market Surveillance Authorities;

·National authorities;

·Notified bodies;

·Others, such as citizens and other NGOs;

·Workers/professionals’ associations.

217 potential respondents were invited to participate in the horizontal survey on October 11, 2019. The survey closed on October 31, 2019.

The survey on horizontal issues gave 83 complete answers and thus a response rate of 38%. The largest group of organisations that have participated were the national public authorities (without Market Surveillance Authorities) (27 %), while Industry Associations were represented with 24% and Market Surveillance Authorities with 11%. 4% of the total participants were manufacturers (individual economic operators).

The “other” category (12 respondents) varied widely; 7 were individual consultants/experts, and the rest included 1 research institute, 1 consumer association, 1 crafts association, 1 professional association and 1 European stakeholder association (type not specified).

Figure 7 below summarise the participation of the different stakeholder groups in the horizontal survey.

Figure 7: Distribution of respondents by organisation in the survey on horizontal issues

With respect to the geographical distribution of the participants, the largest number of participants came from Belgium with 30 participants (36%) and Germany with 10 participants (12%). Participation from other countries was between 0 and 4 participants. It should be noted, however, that among the 30 respondents based in Belgium, 20 were European/international organisations (industry associations), and another 5 were other types of European technical bodies and associations (EOTA and “other” incl. consumer and standardisation organisations).

The Company survey was launched on Monday 10 August 2020 and invitations were distributed to 1,200 companies’ info/main contact email-addresses. The sample of 1,200 firms was selected to correspond to the above target criteria for types of relevant economic operators and firm sizes (based on number of employees), as well as a country-representation of respondents from all EU27 Member States, the UK, Norway and Switzerland. The Company survey was closed on 30 October 2020.

In addition, invitations were shared with 125 national and European business organisations in mid-September 2020, asking them to circulate the invitation to their member companies. In addition, the European Commission forwarded invitations to the companies that had registered for the Online CPR Revision Technical Stakeholder Conference on 7 September. The last two extensions turned out to be particularly effective at increasing the number of companies responding to the survey. In total, 12,304 invitations were sent to companies (not including the business organisations and the outreach facilitated by the Commission) – manufacturers of construction products, distributors of construction products, construction companies, designers and raw material suppliers around the EU, the UK, Norway and Switzerland. Thus, the number of invitations increased tenfold compared to the initial planned outreach to 1,200 companies.

In total, 150 completed questionnaires were received, corresponding to a response rate of approximately 1.2 per cent. However, out of the 150 respondents, 8 were business associations and these are subsequently not included in the figures and the analysis. Furthermore, the results focus on companies from the EU27 Member States, with results including both EU27 companies and non-EU companies reported separately. Thus, in total, the central sample consisted of 131 companies from Member States.

Figure 8: Distribution of respondents by type of economic operator in the company survey

The respondents across types of economic operators were distributed as shown in Figure 8. Besides manufacturers a considerable number economic operators from upstream and downstream participated.

Figure 9: Distribution of respondents by firm size (based on number of employees and turnover)

With regards to firm size, approximately 48% of the respondents are microenterprises, small enterprises medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as shown in Figure 9.

Regarding the geographical spread, Figure 10 reveals that companies from Germany are the most represented in the sample, with 28% of the respondents. Italy was the country with the second highest number of respondents, followed by Austria, Belgium, Poland and Portugal. There were no respondents from Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovakia.

Figure 10: Distribution of respondents by country of headquarters

The Public Consultation was launched on 4 September 2020 and was open until 25 December 2020 (16 weeks). The public consultation was publicly accessible, thus also open to companies, as well as any other types of respondents.

There were in total 263 respondents, out of which 23 citizens (21 EU individuals and 2 non-EU individuals. Out of those, 9 respondents chose to give their input via the shorter questionnaire, whereas 14 opted for the longer, more detailed questionnaire. Thus, in total 254 respondents gave their input via the longer questionnaire.

Companies/business organisations were the most represented stakeholder groups representing 37% of the answers (n=97), followed by business associations with 33% (n=87), EU citizens with 8% (n=21), public authorities with 7% (n=19), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with 3% (n=8), academic/research institutions, consumer organisations, environmental organisations, non-EU citizens and trade unions represented between 1-4 respondents each and 7% selected “other” as their type of respondent(n=19).

With regard to the country of origin of the respondents, 85% (n=223) of the respondents reported an EU Member State as their country of origin, while 15% (n=40) were from non-EU countries.

The distribution of respondents by country of origin was as follows: 23% (n=60) of respondents indicated Germany as their country of origin, 18% (n=48) Belgium, 10% (n=25) Italy, 7% (n=19) Norway, ~5% (n=14) France, ~5% (n=14) Switzerland and ~5% (n=13) Spain. These 7 countries represented 73% of the replies. The other 27% were from Poland (9 respondents), Austria (8 respondents), Czech Republic (7 respondents), Portugal (7 respondents), Sweden (7 respondents), Netherlands (6 respondents), Denmark (5 respondents), the United Kingdom (5 respondents), Hungary (3 respondents), Ireland (3 respondents), Romania (2 respondents), Bulgaria (1 respondent), Canada (1 respondent), Croatia (1 respondent), Estonia (1 respondent), Finland (1 respondent), Greece (1 respondent), Liechtenstein (1 respondent) and the United States (1 respondent).

Concerning the size distribution of responses from companies, 46% (n=45) of the company respondents have 250 employees or more, 22% (n=21) have 50-249 employees, 18% (n=17) have 1-9 employees, and 14% (n=14) have 10-49 employees. Thus, 54% of the company respondents were SMEs.

2.SUMMARY OF RESULTS

With respect to the underlying survey methodology for the company survey and public consultation, the method used was Choice modelling (CM) 168 . A fundamental reason for using choice modelling for providing new insights into economic operators’ preferences and valuations of the revised policy options is that it enabled, at a minimum, to establish a ranking of preferences for the options being put forth by the Commission, alongside estimations of their relative values. This allowed to establish which options are most and least preferred and, importantly, by how much. The core of the questionnaire was the same for the two main surveys, namely the paired comparison part, where respondents were asked to compare the different options.

This report provides a short overview of the consultation activities with regards to the policy options assessed. A more detailed information is provided in the Supporting study for the impact assessment of the CPR Review 169 .

2.1The horizontal survey

The evaluation of responses to the horizontal questionnaire yielded strong support for the CPR’s goal to ensure the free circulation of construction products in the Single Market. On a scale from 0 to 3, where 0 implies “no importance at all” and 3 implies “absolute importance”, 75% of respondents selected 3, while another 18% selected 2.

Interestingly, 53% of respondents also deemed it of absolute importance (i.e. a 3 on the scale) that the CPR should ensure the health and safety of EU citizens, while another 33% selected 2. Lastly, 37% of respondents selected 3, and 36% of respondents selected 2, regarding the importance of the CPR to protect the environment. While these three policy goals may not always be mutually compatible, the results indicated that at least 73% of respondents found it at least important that the CPR addresses each goal.

Furthermore, an overwhelming majority of experts consulted (80%) expressed support for the common technical language for assessing the performance of construction products – i.e. the current approach – in order to achieve the free circulation of construction products. As only 3% of respondents supported mutual recognition as the best way to achieve free circulation, an overwhelming majority was against a repeal of the CPR. At the same time, more than two thirds (68%) of the respondents believed that interpretation issues 170 required a revision of the CPR either in conjunction with guidance 171 (63%) or without any further measures (5%).

2.2The company survey

The purpose of the Company survey was to assess how the Refined indicative policy options for the CPR, prepared and developed by the European Commission and informed inter alia by the horizontal survey among technical stakeholders during the inception phase of this project, were expected to impact firms in the European construction products sector.

The variants of the baseline policy option A were the most preferred across all elements (in element 11 (New business models), “I do not know/Indifferent” was however the most commonly selected answer). On average, variant A was chosen as the most preferred variant by 40% of the respondents across all the 13 elements in which it was available to select. The variants of policy option B were the second most preferred variants. The variants of policy option D were the third most popular variants. Policy option C contained three sub-options C1, C2 and C3. Variant C1 was chosen as the most preferred variant by 3% of the respondents in the element in which it was available to select. On average, variant C2 was chosen as the most preferred variant by 4% of the respondents across the 3 elements in which was it available to select. On average, variant C3 was chosen as the most preferred variant by 2% of the respondents across the 3 elements in which is it available to select. On average, the variants of policy option E was chosen as the most preferred variant by 2% of the respondents across all the 13 elements where it was available to select. On average, 21% of the respondents selected “I do not know/Indifferent” across all 13 elements.

Concerning preferences across types of economic operators, manufacturers tended to be more in favour of the variants of the baseline policy option A, compared to the other types of operators. Across all elements, 54% of manufacturers selected variants of option A as their preferred variant, while 26% of other types of operators selected variants of Option A as their preferred variant. However, variants of option A were still the most preferred also among other types of operators, save for the very high share (47%) on average selecting “I do not know/Indifferent”. The second most preferred option among manufacturers was variants of option B, preferred on average by 25% of manufacturers (and alternative B1 was preferred by 26% in element 13 (circular economy), compared to 3% preferring alternative B2 in that element.

With respect to preferences across firms of different sizes, Figure 11 summarises the average preferences of all variants across all policy options, across the different size classes of companies. It is worth to keep in mind that manufacturers make up 10% of the microenterprises (including independent professionals/self-employed), 56% of the small enterprises, 76% of medium-sized enterprises and 84% of the large enterprises, in the sample.

Figure 11: Average preference ranking across all 13 elements, by different firm sizes

Overall, the survey data suggested that economic operators were broadly in favour of the current CPR, but they noted that there were issues that needed to be solved. Primarily, this concerned issues related to the standardisation process. If legal revision was needed to solve the issues, economic operators seemed to prefer that the issues were repaired without a fundamental change of the underlying principles of the CPR (i.e. a preference for policy option B if the CPR was to be revised). Compared to the baseline option A, respondents who preferred variants of option B expected it to bring increases in, primarily, construction product safety, economic actors’ compliance with relevant rules and regulations, sustainable use of resources for producing construction products, cross-border trade in construction products within the EU Single Market and competition among manufacturers of construction products in the EU.

There was only limited support for enhancing the CPR by introducing EU-wide product safety requirements (option D), and very limited support for focusing the CPR by means of limiting the scope of the CPR (option C). However, the respondents who preferred variants of options D and C typically expected them to lead to larger impacts than those that preferred option B, compared to the baseline option A. Respondents preferring variants of option D expected it to increase construction product safety, compliance with relevant rules and regulations, quality of the built environment in the EU, cross-border trade of construction products in the EU Single Market and competition among manufacturers of construction products in the EU.

Respondents who preferred variants of option C (where variants of Option C2 – focusing the CPR to core areas only – are the most preferred) primarily expected it to lead to an increase in construction product innovation, competition among manufacturers of construction products, cross-border trade of construction products in the EU Single Market, construction product safety, competitiveness of SME manufacturers of construction products vis-à-vis large manufacturers and compliance with relevant rules and regulations.

The strongest individual result of the survey was that repealing the CPR was not preferred by the economic operators. Many respondents stated in free text that a repeal of the CPR would lead to a collapse of the EU Single Market for construction products. However, the few respondents who preferred variants of option E expected it to lead to a decrease in administrative burden for companies and an increase in cross-border trade of construction products in the EU Single Market. They also expected it to lead to a decrease in competitiveness of SME manufacturers of construction products vis-à-vis large manufacturers.

2.3The public consultation

Generally, the result of the public consultation showed that a large majority of stakeholders rejected repealing the CPR (i.e. policy option E). Within each stakeholder group, this variant was the least preferred by at least 76% of the respondents in all elements. Numerous respondents stated in free text that a repeal of the CPR would lead to a collapse of the EU Single Market for construction products. Nevertheless, the few respondents who preferred variants of option E (on average across elements only 0-6% of the respondents within each stakeholder group) expected it essentially to lead to a small decrease in administrative burden, and a very small increase in construction product safety.

Mainly, business associations, manufacturers of construction products, raw material suppliers and trade unions were in favour of the current CPR (i.e. baseline policy option A, no revision of the CPR but improvements to the CPR system to be made under the current rules and available mechanisms). It was the most preferred variant for all elements except element 6 (market surveillance and enforcement). Nevertheless, several stakeholders preferring option A noted that there were issues that needed to be resolved. However, these respondents expressed concerns regarding the risks of a lengthy and complicated revision process.

With regard to the other options, a considerable part of respondents preferred revision of the CPR (i.e. options B, C and D). Principally, this was the case regarding market surveillance and enforcement (50% prefer revision), Scope of EU harmonisation (45%), environmental aspects (45%), CE marking and DoP (44%), and Notified Bodies (43%). The preference for revision was lowest regarding EOTA and TABs (11%), new business models (27%) and the Standardisation process (30%).

There was an almost equal preference for enhancing the CPR with EU-wide construction product requirements (i.e. policy option D) and for repairing the issues without a fundamental change of the scope and underlying principles of the CPR (i.e. policy option B). Among those supporting option D, there was a substantially stronger preference for introducing construction product requirements via the New Legislative Framework approach (i.e. sub-option D1) than for the Technical Specifications approach (i.e. sub-option D2).

Option C (limiting its scope to testing methods and/or to core areas, and/or to make the common technical language optional for manufacturers) was preferred by a lower share of respondents than the other revision options (D and B).

Figure 12 summarises the average preferences of all variants across all policy options, for the different types of respondents including also different sub-types of companies.

Variants corresponding to Option E were strongly rejected. No group of respondents had an average preference for the variants corresponding to Option E above 11%, and most had a preference of 0-2%.

A majority of business associations, manufacturers of construction products, raw material suppliers and trade unions tended to prefer variants corresponding to the baseline policy option A.

A majority of academic/research institutions, consumer, environmental and non-governmental organisations, construction companies, designers, distributors of construction products, EU and non-EU citizens, Other, Other types of companies not related to the construction sector, Other types of companies related to the construction sector, and public authorities tended to prefer variants corresponding to the three policy options for revising the CPR, i.e. options B, C and D.

From the responses to the open consultation, four main dividing lines could be derived. The first dividing line was between respondents wishing to maintain harmonisation legislation for construction products and those preferring, either expressly or implicitly, to rely on the principle mutual recognition, which would be the consequence of repealing the CPR (option E). The vast majority of all stakeholders wished to maintain harmonisation legislation for construction products; they rejected the repeal option. Many respondents stated that a repeal of the CPR would lead to a collapse of the EU Single Market for construction products. However, the few respondents who preferred variants of option E expected it primarily to lead to a small decrease in administrative burden, and a very small increase in construction product safety.

The second dividing line concerned the development of the harmonised technical specifications and seemed to be between the preference for the current system based solely on mandatory harmonised standards and the preference for adding a fall-back path towards technical specifications by Commission acts (option B and those based on it). A common characteristic that was observed amongst those who preferred either of the options A and B was a positive perception of the ‘common technical language approach’ and of the high degree of stakeholder involvement in the development of technical specifications.

A third dividing line concerned the extent of the harmonisation. While the current harmonisation for construction products was considered ‘exhaustive’, the different variants of option C would result in less exhaustive harmonisation. Both options B and D would seemingly maintain the principle of exhaustive harmonisation. A vast majority of all respondents seemed to reject the reduction in harmonisation, which would be the result of option C.

The fourth dividing line was between the pure common technical language approach (no product requirements, only common methods and criteria) on the one hand and the product requirement approach on the other, whilst the latter was only deemed to be complementary in option D.

Figure 12: Preferred variants by the different types of respondents across all elements

Annex 3: Who is affected and how?

1. Practical implications of the initiative

The estimates on costs and benefits of the preferred option (Option D) presented in this Annex are based on three aproaches:

-Quantitative estimates on direct effects from the accompanying studie 172

-Qualitative estimates on indirect benefits building on these and economic analysis of the Commission

-Calculations based on the available information and the knowledge of the Commission team responsible for the CPR using the tools from the Commission’s Better regulation toolbox – November 2021 edition 173 .

The study supporting this Impact Assessment expected that option D would lead to an increase in the costs for manufacturers associated with the CPR. The expected cost increase is driven by an increase in substantive compliance costs, administrative burden and regulatory charges in relation to CE marking and Declaration of Performance (DoP), to a small degree offset by cost reductions related to national requirements and product safety requirements. It should be noted that the study did not cover relevant changes in the legal text such as the the declaration of environmental information, circular economy clauses, the additional provisions for reused products and the new database/system to register declarations of performance and conformity.

The largest sector-wide impact is expected for medium sized companies, where the change towards option D is estimated to increase costs, on aggregate, by 211 million EUR for manufacturers corresponding to 0.19% of the revenue among medium companies in the sector. The corresponding cost increase among large companies is estimated to amount to, on aggregate, 48 million EUR, 0.03% of revenue. Meanwhile, the cost among small companies is estimated to decrease, on aggregate, by 58 million EUR, 0.05% of revenue. It should be noted that these figures are based on a rather limited number of replies in the context of the supporting study and should therefore be considered best available estimates and be considered with appropriate caution as regards their accuracy.

The expected cost decrease among small companies is somewhat counterintuitive and is particularly inconsistent with the expectation among medium-sized and large companies of substantial cost increases. The study supporting this Impact Assessment has provided no obvious explanation for this, other than perhaps the uncertainties associated with the projections due to a relatively small number of observations received.

Beyond this, the study expected substantial benefits of potentially 2.5 billion EUR annually of an improved market surveillance (see table 8).

The revision of the CPR will lead to indirect benefits, which could not be quantified, notably an increased safety of construction products, an increase in economic actors’ compliance with relevant rules and regulations, more cross-border trade in construction products within the EU Single Market and more innovation.

After the positive opinion with reservations of the RSB on 26 January 2022 (see Annex 1) the administrative burden and adjustment costs of all newly introduced, changed or abolished obligations of the legal draft for the CPR revision were calculated. For this the Commission’s OIOO (one in one out) online calculator tool based on the EU standard cost model was used. The estimates were based on Eurostat data, previous reports developed in the context of the CPR e.g. previous Impact Assessment and EOTA report 174 or in the context of other regulations e.g. Inception Impact Assessment on the Single Digital Gateway 175 and the knowledge of the responsible Commission team as there were no further data sources available for this exercise.

The calculations add up further direct annual benefits of more than 200 million EUR annually stemming mainly from the circularity provisions expected to facilitate consumers’ (building owners or facility management services) interaction with construction products. Further, the CPR revision will save administrative burden of around 630 million EUR annually compared with additional administrative burden of around 450 million EUR. Altogether, there will be an annual net reduction of administrative burden of companies of around 180 million EUR. On the cost side direct annual adjustment cost of around 420 million EUR were identified and around 19 million EUR indirect adjustment costs.

The most relevant introduced/changed or abolished obligations identified during the OIOO calculations are as regards the administrative burden:

·Additional information to be provided by the manufacturer as regards environmental performance:

With the update of the harmonised standards under the revised CPR the manufacturers will have to provide information on the environmental performance of their products. A pertinent number of companies will be subject to this obligation and will need external support for the calculation and verification. Assessments are expected to be performed every 5 years and the cost per company will shrink when using the relevant provisions for sharing calculations. The administrative burden is estimated at 330 million EUR. As a few manufacturers have already undertaken these calculations voluntarily, the administrative burden after business as usual costs is estimated at 310 million EUR.

·Introduction of product requirements and declaration of conformity

For some construction products product requirements linked with a declaration of conformity will be introduced. The gross burden per product is similar compared to the environmental performance. However, manufacturers may collect the required information together. Therefore, the administrative burden after business as usual costs is estimated at 26 million EUR.

·Additional validation of the provisions related to the custom-made non-series product

The revised CPR will introduce an external assessment of custom-made non-series products. This action will apply to a limited number of manufacturers, which in many cases currently already undertake this assessment voluntarily. The additional administrative burden is estimated at 75 million EUR.

·The introduction of a fall back option for standardisation

In cases where standardisation process fails to deliver, the Commission may step in under the revised CPR. This will incentivise standard development or replace it if not possible. Therefore, more products than today will be covered by the CPR and more standards will be updated. This will increase the competitiveness of the market and replace existing national requirements by harmonised standards. This is expected to reduce the administrative burden by 160 million EUR.

·Duplication of information in CE marking and DoP is not required anymore

The current CPR requires the repetition of information in the CE label and in the declaration of performance (DoP). Under the revised CPR, this will be simplified, the ECP will contain the permalink to the declarations (DoP & DoC). This will reduce the administrative burden for all products slightly. This is expected to reduce the administrative burden by 40 million EUR.

·Availability of declarations in a centralised database or alternative system

As part of the digitalisation efforts under the revised CPR, the introduction of an online database or information system is foreseen, which will store the DoP, DoC and instructions for use of all harmonised products. This system will facilitate access to the declarations reducing the time needed by the users of construction products to find the right information. This is expected to reduce the administrative burden by 310 million EUR.

2.    Summary of costs and benefits

Table 8: Overview of Benefits (total for all provisions) – Preferred Option

Table 9: Overview of costs – Preferred option

* The possible future delegated acts introducing a minimum number of checks to be performed and a minimum human resources needed for market surveillance will be accompanied by a specific assessment of the resources implications.

Annex 4: Analytical methods

This Impact Assessment is supported by a study 178 , collecting evidence and complementing the available evidence in order to analyse potential future options for the EU legislation on construction products and to assess their possible impacts.

Input from key experts within the field was collected via an initial horizontal survey 179 and used by the Commission services to refine and complement the indicative revised options. The resulting options have been explored in depth to assess preferences and impacts primarily via a survey among companies and a public consultation, supplemented with evidence from previous studies carried out in the context of the CPR review 180 and a Survey on future options carried out by the Commission services in 2020. Finally, the study provides an evidence-based comparison of the various options based on the broader evidence base, inter alia, including the previous impact assessment supporting study from 2018, as well as feedback from the validation workshop 181 conducted in the concluding phase of this project.

Public consultation

The policy options were mapped around 13 distinct elements, corresponding to the horizontal issues and main features of the CPR system. Each of the 13 elements were then attributed various "levels" reflecting the different ways in which the various policy options would address these (henceforth referred to as variants). The answer option “Do not know/Indifferent” was also available for respondents to select, in every element. The mapping of the policy options around 13 elements makes it comprehensible for respondents to provide informed input about the many different and individually complex issues and features of the CPR system.

Respondents were asked whether they wished to provide input on each of the 13 elements. Only respondents who replied “Yes” were asked the following questions, while the other were directed to the next element (or, in the case of the last element, to the final page of the questionnaire).

The respondents were asked to grade the impact they expect their preferred variant to have on each type of impact, compared to the baseline variant A according to a 5-grade scale encompassing: large decrease, small decrease, no or negligible impact, small increase and large increase.

Methodology: impacts on costs

The study has mirrored the approach of the previous study supporting the Impact Assessment for the CPR conducted for the European Commission 182 to the extent possible based on the responses from the company survey. Based on this, we provide the following two outcomes:

1) Quantification of the impact on costs and benefits of each option as a percent of revenue 183 by company size;

2) Quantification of the sector-wide impact on costs and benefits for companies in the CPR-related manufacturing sector from a regulatory shift towards different options relative to the baseline for companies by both company size and aggregated.

It is important to note that the insights to be gained from cost and benefit impact estimates are less crucial than those that can be obtained from preference rankings for three primary reasons:

·Firstly, the complexity of the questions related to cost and benefit impacts may prevent some respondents from being able to answer the question accurately;

·Secondly, the results are sensitive towards a single company’s response since only few respondents 184 provided input on the impacts;

·Thirdly, an inconsistency appears in the company survey responses where multiple respondents have selected the same option (for example option D) as both their preferred and least preferred option.

This introduces a substantial amount of uncertainty around the estimates on cost impacts compared to results on preference rankings.

The methodology for calculating cost impacts was based on four steps:

i. Calculate the baseline costs and foregone revenue of option A;

ii. Estimate the change in the costs and benefits of each option relative to the baseline;

iii. Calculate the impacts on the costs and benefits of each option;

iv. Estimate the sector-wide impacts on the costs and benefits of each option.

Regarding the first step, the baseline costs and foregone revenue were calculated as the share of revenue by dividing it with the average reported revenue by company size. In the second step the average percentage change in costs and foregone revenue of a regulatory shift towards each option within four elements, four cost categories (except for element 6 which holds only one cost and foregone revenue category) is estimated and split them by company size where possible. The reported percentage change in the costs of respondents preferred and least preferred options for each of the cost categories within each of the four elements is used. In the third step, calculations of the change in costs or foregone revenue of a regulatory shift towards each option by multiplying the percentage change in costs with the reported costs and foregone revenue of the baseline option A are made. These calculations are made for each of the elements and each of the cost/foregone revenue categories within each element. Lastly, in the fourth step an estimation of the sector-wide impact on costs and benefits for companies in the CPR-related manufacturing sector is made by scaling up the estimated change in the costs and the benefits as a percent of revenue. As the scalar, an estimate of the sector-wide revenue for companies in the CPR-related manufacturing sector is used.

The following evaluation grid shows how the various sources contributed to addressing the impact assessment questions:

Table 10: Sources of evidence