The European Affordable Housing Plan and the Strategy for Housing Construction

Action 1 - Simplifying and digitalising permitting procedures

• The Commission will work with Member States to simplify national, regional and local permitting procedures through a thorough mapping, possibly feeding into the housing simplification package (2027) and the Affordable Housing Act (Q4 2026).
• The Commission will continue to support Member State reforms and leverage funding instruments (Recovery and Resilience Plans, Cohesion policy funds and Digital Europe).

Action 2 – Moving towards full digitalisation of the Single Market for Construction

• Mandatory application of the Digital Product Passport as of 2028, will make the data related to construction products easily accessible for all stakeholders and applications.
• The further step in digitalisation will be the roll out of a harmonised system for Digital Building Logbooks, with a standardisation request as a first step (in Q1 2026 with the objective to have a harmonised DBL standard by the end of 2028).

Action 3 - Boosting innovation uptake by development of standards

• The Commission will accelerate the development of standards for construction products under the new CPR. The first new product standards will cover cement, structural metallic products, glass, doors and windows. The Commission has adopted a first Working Plan for 2026 to 2029 for the implementation of the CPR including priorities and timeframes.
• The Commission is launching, as a priority under the CPR Acquis process, the request for development of standards for offsite construction products and modular systems (launch early 2026, with the aim to adopt the first standardisation request in 2027).

Action 4 - Leveraging financial instruments to increase deployment of innovative construction materials, products and technologies

• The EIB has recently set up a new lending envelope of EUR 400 million, with involvement of InvestEU, dedicated to investing in new technologies that have the potential to tackle the high construction and development costs and speed up the supply of new housing stocks.
• The Commission will launch a pilot project on offsite construction under the Competitiveness Coordination Tool with the aim to remove regulatory obstacles and create a real pan-European market for the sector, to help it reach the scale needed to provide a faster response to the pressing construction targets. In the course of 2026, the Commission will lead the efforts to develop this CCT project with Member States.
• The Commission will continue funding research and roll-out of quality innovative solutions and disseminate good practices under the New European Bauhaus

Action 5 – Enabling access to and circulation of the secondary construction materials and products

• The Commission will set the legal steps and timeline to address fragmentation end-of-waste criteria and remove other obstacles to the free movement of secondary construction materials within the Single Market (by the third quarter of 2026, as part of the Circular Economy Act).
• Subject to an on-going impact assessment demonstrating sufficient benefits, the Commission may propose mandatory digitalised pre-demolition audits (by the third quarter of 2026, as part of the Circular Economy Act) and subsequently set up a Digital European Construction Resource Assessment platform, which will help to connect the national systems.

Action 6 – Increasing the flow of cross-border construction services

• The Commission will ensure that companies and professionals can provide construction services more easily across borders, without lowering social standards, through a Construction Services Act (Q4 2026).
• The Skills Portability Initiative aims to enable both workers and employers to navigate recognition systems more efficiently, and to modernise recognition processes (Q3 2026)

Action 7 - Increasing the availability of skilled workforce in construction

The future European Competitiveness Fund will be able to support upskilling and reskilling actions in the areas covered by the Fund, such as construction, and foster public-private partnerships between universities, Vocational Education and Training (VET) providers, businesses (in particular SMEs), social partners and applied research institutes.

The NEB Academy will be scaled up to support innovation and research, build capacity and skills for innovative construction methods and materials across the EU, and support SMEs and professionals.