Parliament adopts position on EU’s green construction product rules

The European Parliament passed new rules on Tuesday (12 July) to standardise construction products in the EU, amid criticism from the Greens who say the law does nothing to transform the industry.

Last year, the European Commission proposed a revamp of the 2011 rules governing intra-EU trade in construction products, one of the bloc’s biggest industries.

Existing standard-setting rules are largely considered outdated, while the construction industry struggles in the face of high interest rates, skyrocketing material prices and low productivity.

“Now is the time to prevent overregulation,” said Christian Doleschal, a Bavarian EU lawmaker and lead negotiator on the proposal, who has shown openness to the industry’s views. 

On Tuesday (12 July), the European Parliament backed his negotiation mandate with 498 votes in favour and 124 against, paving the way for talks with EU countries to finalise the reform.

Doleschal claimed victory in his attempt to limit the European Commission’s ability to create new standards for the construction sector, upholding instead the role of European standard bodies CEN and CENELEC.

Activists, meanhwile, say these bodies are primarily staffed by industry and are known to favour companies in the construction business.

With the proposed reform “there will be fewer complaints about quality and no more delays,” Doleschal retorted. Furthermore, his proposal will see every construction product equipped with a “digital passport” to boost the digitalisation efforts of the construction sector, he argued.

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Greens and activists dismayed

While negotiations proceeded quietly for over a year, Green lawmakers and activists have raised serious concerns with the compromise negotiated by Doleschal.

“The Conservatives, with the support of the construction lobby, have prevailed in today’s vote,” said Anna Cavazzini, a German EU lawmaker for the Greens who chairs the European Parliament’s internal market committee.

“Contrary to the Commission’s proposals and the Green Deal, the law does nothing to transform the construction sector into a sustainable industry,” she declared.

Cavazzini criticised the construction industry for using construction product rules to circumvent economy-wide green standards as part of a separate law, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).

“The fact that the ambitious sustainability standards of the Ecodesign Regulation do not apply to many building products, such as doors, windows or cement, is a bitter setback,” she said.

Consequently, the rules would not be fit to tackle the massive material consumption – and subsequent climate footprint – intrinsic to the industry. Construction and buildings emit almost 40% of the EU’s greenhouse gas. 

EU lawmakers “voted for a Construction Products Regulation that will not come close to tackling the growing emissions of the construction sector,” said Federica Pozzi, an expert at the standards-focussed NGO Ecos.

Doleschal’s negotiated compromise “will postpone this urgent problem to the next decade,” Pozzi added.

On the other hand, German lawmaker Cavazzini credited her group with one fundamental change: a fallback clause for cement inserted in the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).

Under the amendment, which sill needs to be confirmed in a Parliament voted on Wednesday (12 July), cement should be included in the ESPR rules by 2027. 

Cement is a key source of CO2 emissions in the construction industry. The second-most traded commodity in the world is responsible for about 8% of global emissions.

[Edited by Alice Taylor and Frédéric Simon]

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