IBU is committed at EU level to improving the new Construction Products Regulation (CPR)
“Good intentions are not enough. We reject unreasonable costs for construction product manufacturers, especially if they do not provide any additional benefits for sustainability,” says Florian Pronold, Managing Director of the Institute for Building and Environment (IBU). The IBU represents the interests of over 370 member companies from the construction industry that are committed to sustainability and transparency in their construction products. In a letter to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other political decision-makers, IBU Managing Director Florian Pronold points out problematic regulations in the new Construction Products Regulation (EU 2024/3110).
The focus is on two planned regulations:
The mandatory initial on-site inspections (“initial site inspection”) mean additional costs and bureaucracy, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, without actually improving the transparency or quality of environmental data. Several thousand euros in costs per production site add up to a total burden of €50 million across Europe without any added value for sustainability. A one-time on-site inspection provides virtually no information for the life cycle assessment of construction products.
In addition, the “worst-case approach” to declaring environmental impacts would mean that manufacturers would have to provide extremely pessimistic scenarios in the future – even if these have nothing to do with reality. This undermines the comparability of environmental product declarations (EPDs), complicates sustainability assessments, and unnecessarily unsettles manufacturers. The market trend is toward more and more construction product manufacturers wanting to distinguish themselves through more sustainably produced products. These advances must also be visible and recognizable in the future.
The IBU expressly emphasizes that it supports the basic direction of the new CPR – in particular the stronger anchoring of sustainability aspects in the declaration of performance of construction products. The IBU believes this step is right and important. This makes it all the more crucial that the specific requirements are practical and proportionate.
The IBU e.V. has signed the position paper of the ECO Platform together with other EPD program holders. It summarizes the common concerns and calls for the critical points to be adjusted in the interests of an effective but also implementable regulatory system.
The ECO Platform position paper is available for download here: Call to Action_on CPR2024_2025.04.07.