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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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