New product standards for precast concrete elements
As part of the revision of the Construction Products Regulation, the European Commission decided to issue new standardization requests for harmonized standards. Precast concrete elements were the first product group for which a new standardization request M/609 was published in April 2025. A few months earlier, a new Construction Products Regulation (CPR 2024/3110) was published, which came into force on January 7, 2025. Due to the overlap in time, M/609 is still based on the old Construction Products Regulation (CPR 305/2011).
In preparation for the work on the new product standards, the responsible CEN TC 229 agreed on a new structure for the standards:
Replacement of the 27 harmonized product standards (hEN) with one harmonized standard that is fully consistent with M/609.
Development of a non-harmonized standard to maintain the provisions not covered by the M/609 standardization request.
This approach is intended to make the standards easier to apply and their revision more efficient. The new harmonized standard EN 18190 Precast concrete products – Performance assessment and declaration was published as a draft in mid-2025. The formal vote will take place in mid-2026. Due to some reservations from member states and extensive comments, the European Commission has decided to extend the schedule so that a citation in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) must take place by the beginning of 2027 at the latest.
Since the legal basis for the new EN 18190 continues to be the old Construction Products Regulation (CPR 305/2011), requirements of the new Construction Products Regulation (CPR 2024/3110), e.g., environmental indicators for global warming potential, digital product passport, and declaration of conformity, do not yet have to be implemented.
