Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

RemovedRecital 35: (35) In order to reach alignment with other product legislation and subject to the general principles of Regulation (EC) No 765/2008, the CE marking should be affixed to construction products for which the manufacturer has drawn up a declaration of performance or conformity. The manufacturer thereby takes the responsibility for the conformity of the product with the declared performance and applicable product requirements. A CE marking should be sufficient proof of the performance and conformity of a product with the characteristics and requirements laid down by this Regulation. Member States should not therefore introduce any barriers to their markets based on characteristics and requirements that are not covered by the harmonised zone.

AddedRecital 35 a (new): (35a) Markings other than the CE marking, including private ones, might contain additional information that could help users to make an informed choice on which product would be best suited for the needs of their construction works.

RemovedClarification that no gold plating is intended.

AddedRecital 35 b (new): (35b) The procedural rights of all economic operators and natural or legal persons acting on their behalf in relation to measures, decisions or orders taken by competent national authorities should be ensured in line with Regulation (EU) 2019/1020. Member States should ensure that adequate appeal procedures against such measures, decisions or orders are in place.

RemovedRecital 35 a (new): (35a) Procedural rights of all economic operators and natural and legal persons acting on their behalf as regards competent national authorities' measures, decisions or orders taken should be ensured in line with the Regulation (EU) 2019/1020. Member States shall ensure the adequate appeal procedure against such measures.

AddedRecital 36: (36) To ensure safety, functionality and sustainability of construction products, and by extension of construction works, all economic operators intervening in the supply chain should take appropriate measures to ensure that they place or make available on the market only construction products which are in compliance with the binding Union requirements. In order to improve the legal clarity, it is necessary to set explicitly the obligations of economic operators.

RemovedIn replacement of the deletion of Article 20.

Recital 38: deleted

Change 10

RemovedRecital 40: (40) To create transparency for users of construction products and to avoid inappropriate use of those products, construction products and their intended use should be precisely identified by the manufacturer. For the same reason, the manufacturer should make clear whether the construction products are intended for professional use only, or also for use by consumers. To ensure that construction products can be traced back, information that allows the identification of manufacturers should be indicated on the product or, where this is not possible e.g. due to the product’s size or surface, on its packaging or, where that is not possible either, in a document accompanying it.

AddedRecital 39: (39) Technical documentation about construction products, drawn by the manufacturer, facilitates the verification of those products by authorities and notified bodies against the Union requirements. To enhance access to comprehensive information, that technical documentation should include the essential characteristics related to life cycle of the construction product.

Change 11

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Change 12

RemovedAlignment with Article 26.

AddedRecital 42: (42) To optimise the pursuit of the goals of the European Green Deal and of the Circular Economy Action Plan, the manufacturers should be obliged to ensure that both their products and manufacturing contribute significantly to the Union's climate and environmental objectives by substantially improving their products' environmental footprint. This obligation requires trade-off-decisions between different environmental aspects and between environmental and safety aspects, whilst both environmental and safety aspects can relate to the product as such or to the construction works. To give manufacturers certainty about how to make these trade-off decisions, this Regulation should set out clear trade-off rules.

AddedRecital 43: (43) With the goals of ensuring sustainability and durability of construction products, manufacturers should ensure that products can be used for as long as possible. Such long use requires adequate design, use of reliable parts, reparability of products, availability of information on repair and access to replacement parts.

AddedRecital 44: (44) In view of enhancing the circularity of construction products, in line with the goals of the Circular Economy Action Plan and the waste hierarchy, manufacturers should prevent waste generation by facilitating and prioritising repair, re-use and remanufacturing. Manufacturers should increase resource efficiency through appropriate use of by-products and should, when products come to the end of their life, ensure recycling of their products. The (preparation for) re-use, remanufacturing and recycling require specific design choices, namely facilitating the separation of products, components and materials at de-installation, deconstruction and demolition and at the later stage of recycling and avoiding mixed, blended or intricate materials and substances of concern. As the usual instructions for use will not necessarily reach the economic operators in charge of (preparation for) re-use, remanufacturing and recycling, the necessary information in this regard should be made available in the Digital Product Passport and on the manufacturer’s websites or by means of QR codes, in addition to the instructions for use.

AddedRecital 45: (45) To deliver safe, functional and environmentally sustainable construction products, it is necessary to establish comprehensive sustainability and safety obligations for manufacturers. Given the importance of these obligations, general requirements on the gradual improvement of environmental performance, the preferred use of environmentally friendly materials, recycled content obligations and the availability of information on the use, repair, remanufacturing or recycling of products should be applicable to all manufacturers. In order to specify these requirements for certain product families or categories as well as to set further requirements and to achieve the right balance between the functionality, safety and sustainability, the Commission should be empowered to determine the conditions by delegated acts under which, for a specific product family or category, these obligations are fulfilled or presumed to be fulfilled.

AddedRecital 47: (47) In order to be able to make informed choices, users of construction products should be sufficiently well informed about the environmental performances of products, about their conformity with environmental requirements and of the degree of fulfilment of manufacturer’s environmental obligations in this regard. Therefore, the Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts to establish specific labelling requirements

AddedRecital 50: (50) An economic operator who stores or modifies a product in such a way that its performance or safety might be affected should be subject to the obligations of manufacturers, to ensure the verification whether performance or safety of the product are still the same.

Recital 51: (51) In order to increase compliance of manufacturers with the obligations under this Regulation and to contribute to addressing the identified shortcomings and improve the market surveillance, fulfilment service providers, online market places, sellers and brokers should be empowered and requested to verify at a documentary level that manufacturers have complied with their obligations as regards technical documentation, and should contribute to ensuring that only compliant products reach the users.

Change 13

RemovedAlignment with Article 27.

AddedRecital 52: (52) In order to avoid that the obligations under this Regulation are circumvented in cases where the production technology, for example 3D-printing, could involve several different actors contributing to the design and manufacture of a construction product, it is necessary to clearly define the role of the manufacturer. The natural and legal person printing a construction product should take responsibility under this Regulation for the whole product, unless there is another person who places the product on the market under his name or trademark or who takes responsibility for the product by issuing a declaration of performance and conformity.

RemovedRecital 53: deleted

RemovedRecital is obsolete, as Art. 29, to which the recital refers, has been deleted.

Recital 54: deleted

Change 14

RemovedRecital is obsolete, as Article 30, to which the recital refers, has been deleted.

AddedRecital 55: (55) Certain items used for construction have multiple potential purposes. Their manufacturers should have the freedom to decide whether these items are intended for construction or not, also in order to avoid that they have to undergo performance and conformity assessment where not necessary. However, if they decide that a certain item is not intended for construction whilst it could be used for it, it should be marked as “not for construction” and the manufacturers and other economic operators should ensure that it is not used in construction works. Otherwise some of the items would end up in construction whilst not fulfilling the requirements of this Regulation.

Recital 58: (58) Digital technologies, which provide a significant potential for reducing administrative burden and costs for economic operators and public authorities, while also fostering innovative and new business opportunities and models, are evolving at rapid pace. The uptake of digital technologies will also contribute significantly towards achieving the objectives of the Renovation Wave, including energy efficiency, life-cycle assessments and monitoring and of the building stock.

Change 15

RemovedAlignment with Article 33.

Recital 59: deleted

Change 16

RemovedRecital is obsolete, as Article 34, to which the recital refers, has been deleted.

Recital 60: deleted

Change 17

RemovedRecital is obsolete, as Article 34, to which the recital refers, has been deleted.

AddedRecital 61 a (new): (61a) When setting up guidelines on the appropriate form and content of standards, the Commission should build on the important work already done in the EC Guidelines for hENs under the CPR as of 28/06/2018, which has been presented by the Commission in the framework of the Joint Initiative on Standardisation.

RemovedRecital 61 a (new): (61a) Gaps in standardisation such as missing product characteristics or missing testing methods should not lead to a situation where the specific performance of a product related to the product's intended use required in a Member State to ensure the safety of the construction works cannot be declared in the Declaration of Performance. Required product characteristics which have not yet been fully harmonised and are related to a specific use can be regulated nationally until harmonisation has been achieved in order to avoid regulatory gaps.

AddedRecital 65: (65) In order to respond to a noteworthy percentage of notifications which were based on incomplete or erroneous assessments, in particular where legal bodies without own in-house technical competence were notified, it is necessary to strengthen the resources capacity of notifying authorities, namely by setting up minimum requirements; to make requirements for notified bodies more precise, namely with regard to their independence, delegation to other legal entities and own ability to perform; to require adequate qualified staffing of notified bodies and to verify the adequacy of the staffing, to ensure that the staffing of the notified body is sufficient and independent, and to enlarge the documentation to be provided by bodies when applying for designation as notified body so as to provide a deeper and comparatively fairer basis for decision to notifying authorities.

RemovedRecital 61 b (new): (61b) When setting up guidelines on the appropriate form and content of standards, the Commission should build on the important work already done in the EC Guidelines for hENs under the CPR as of 28/06/2018, which has been presented by the Commission in the framework of the Joint Initiative on Standardisation.

AddedRecital 68: (68) In order to avoid involvement between notified bodies’ staff and the manufacturers, it should be possible for the notified bodies to allow rotation between the personnel carrying out different conformity assessment tasks.

RemovedRecital 65: (65) In order to respond to a noteworthy percentage of notifications which were based on incomplete or erroneous assessments, in particular where legal bodies without own in-house technical competence were notified, it is necessary to strengthen the resources capacity of notifying authorities, namely by setting up minimum requirements; to make requirements for notified bodies more precise, namely with regard to their independence, delegation to other legal entities and own ability to perform; to require adequate qualified staffing of notified bodies and to verify the adequacy of the staffing, to ensure that the notified body have sufficient and independent staffing and to enlarge the documentation to be provided by bodies when applying for designation as notified body so as to provide a deeper and comparatively fairer basis for decision to notifying authorities.

AddedRecital 71: (71) In view of creating a level playing field for notified bodies and manufacturers, the coordination amongst notified bodies should be enhanced. As only half of the current notified bodies participate on their own initiative in the activities of the already currently existing notified body coordination group, directly or by means of designated representatives, should be ensured by Member States.

RemovedAlignment with changes in Art. 49 (6), Article 50 (3) and Article 50 (6).

AddedRecital 72: (72) The attempts of establishing simplified procedures for microenterprises in Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 and thus reducing the burden and costs on microenterprises have not been entirely effective and have often remained misunderstood or not used due to the lack of awareness or the lack of clarity regarding their application. By addressing the identified shortcomings while building on the previously established rules, it is necessary to clarify and facilitate their application and hence achieve the objective of supporting microenterprises while ensuring performance, safety and environmental sustainability of construction products.

RemovedRecital 68: deleted

AddedRecital 74: (74) To ensure legal certainty in case of safety or performance problems, such recognition should only be permitted where the assessed and verified economic operators agree to cooperate with the recognised notified body, and share the data with it,.

RemovedRecital is obsolete, as Article 60 (7), to which the recital refers, has been deleted.

AddedRecital 75: (75) The evaluation of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 showed that market surveillance activities carried out at national level, widely vary in quality and effectiveness. In addition to measures set out in this Regulation and under relevant Union law in favour of better market surveillance, the compliance of economic operators, bodies and products with this Regulation should be facilitated by also involving third parties such as by the possibility of any natural or legal person to submit information on non-compliance through a complaint portal established and maintained by the Commission.

RemovedRecital 71: (71) In view of creating a level playing field for notified bodies and manufacturers, the coordination amongst notified bodies should be enhanced. As only half of the current notified bodies participate on their own initiative in the activities of the already currently existing notified body coordination group, participation thereto, directly or by means of designated representatives, should be ensured by Member States.

AddedRecital 76: (76) To address the identified shortcomings with regards to the market surveillance under Regulation (EU) No. 305/2011, this Regulation should contain more justified empowerments for Member States authorities and for the Commission that should enable authorities to act under all potential problematic circumstances.

RemovedAlignment to Article 63.

RemovedRecital 74: (74) To ensure legal certainty in case of safety or performance problems, such recognition should only be permitted where the assessed and verified economic operators agree to cooperate and share the data with the recognised notified body.

RemovedAlignment with Article 67.

RemovedRecital 75: (75) The evaluation of Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 showed that market surveillance activities carried out at national level, widely vary in quality and effectiveness. In addition to measures set out in this Regulation and under relevant Union law in favour of better market surveillance, the compliance of economic operators, bodies and products with this Regulation should be facilitated by also involving third parties such as by the possibility of any natural or legal person to submit information on non-compliances through a complaint portal established and maintained by the Commission.

RemovedAlignment with Article 68.

Recital 78: deleted

Change 18

RemovedRecital is obsolete because of changes in Article 73.

Recital 79: (79) In addition, to strengthen the on average weak capacities of market surveillance authorities in terms of market surveillance and to further align with the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, it is necessary to provide more detailed administrative coordination support and to provide them with the right to retrieve costs of inspections and testing from economic operators if they are in possession of non-compliant products.

Change 19

RemovedAlignment with Article 75.

AddedRecital 81: (81) To better serve economic operators, product contact points for construction should become more effective and therefore should obtain more resources. In order to facilitate the work of economic operators, the tasks of product contact points for construction should be fine-tuned and extended so as to include information on product related provisions of this Regulation and on acts adopted in accordance with it. Member States should also raise economic operators’ awareness of the product contact points for construction within their territory.

Change 20

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Change 21

RemovedThose product contact points were not well known in the past by economic operators.

AddedRecital 87: (87) Business on construction products becomes slowly but steadily more and more international. Hence, situations arise where non-compliances of economic operators based outside the Union need to be countered as well. As third countries hardly are ready to support the enforcement of Union law on their territory where the Union does not in return provide for the possibility to assist them, some provision should be made in this Regulation for the Commission to engage in international cooperation.