The Competitiveness Council, meeting on 25 May, sealed a political agreement on the draft regulation establishing harmonised conditions for construction products.

The proposed regulation updates and clarifies the existing legislative framework and eliminates the remaining regulatory and technical obstacles to free movement of construction products in the European Economic Area. Once adopted, it will replace Directive 89/106/EEC. The aim is to clarify the basic concepts and use of ‘CE marking’, to introduce simplified procedures to reduce costs incurred by enterprises and to improve the credibility of the system by imposing new and stricter designation criteria to bodies in charge of assessing the constancy of performance of construction products.

More specifically, the proposal seeks to ensure accurate and reliable information on construction products by putting in place, on the one hand, a system composed of a set of harmonised technical specifications and standards as well as European assessment documents, and on the other a number of notified and technical assessment bodies charged with ensuring correct application of assessment methods.

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The ministers mainly debated safety aspects related to the use of construction products, a point raised by Austria and Sweden, which wish to put more emphasis on this aspect. Another key concern for Bulgaria, Finland and Austria is the possibility of allowing micro-enterprises that manufacture construction products to apply simplified procedures to keep from creating an excessive administrative burden. The Council also discussed the information to be provided by national administrations through ‘product contact points’ and the use of electronic means for the submission of performance declarations for products to be placed on the market.

Following the European Parliament’s first-reading opinion, in April 2009, the European Commission presented an amended proposal, on 20 October last year. The most substantial changes accepted by the Commission (and the Council) were made by amendments that limit use of European technical assessments (ETAs) to situations where the product in question is not covered or only partially covered by a harmonised standard. The ETA serves as a parallel route to the CE mark: it enables a manufacturer to request the creation of a new harmonised technical specification adapted to its product through the development of a European assessment document (EAD), which has a function comparable to that of harmonised standards.