The European Commission is currently obliging its Member States to apply harmonized European standards for construction products in order to determine and control their quality properties. The German Federal Government today brought a complaint before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) against the inadequate implementation of these construction standards.
These are some important details:
- To date, the Commission declares additional national quality requirements and safety tests for construction products, which exceed the European CE label, as unlawful.
- However, from the Federal Government's perspective, these EU standards limit the regulatory options for constructing safe buildings and moreover reduce the environmental, health and consumer protection level.
- For instance, according to current EU regulation, manufacturers of floor coverings are not required to provide any evidence on the concentration and emission of pollutants of their floor coverings.
With this legal complaint, the German Federal Government aims to repeal the Commission’s current drafting of standards by means of an ECJ decision, thereby opening up possibilities for national supplementary regulations to be legally binding.
Source: German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety
More information