03 June 2026
By Barbara Sorgato, secretary general, European Consortium of Anchors Producers (ECAP)
On 16th December 2025 the European Commission published in the Official Journal of the European Union the ‘2026 – 2029 Working Plan for the new Construction Products Regulation 2024’ (CPR:2024)1, which set out the order and timing of the process of standardisation of all construction product families listed in the CPR:2024 – with work on post-installed fasteners beginning in 2028, but how does the process work?
This article will focus on a presentation during a full day conference on the new Construction Products Regulation (CPR), held on 25th November 2025 by the European Commission2. The first part of the presentation showed the timings of the process – from the drafting of the Standardisation Request (18 to 22 months) to the mandatory application of the harmonised standard.
The Standardisation Requests are the documents containing all information required to draft the harmonised standards for the product families listed in CPR:2024 and are drawn up by dedicated subgroups. They are the legal basis of harmonised standards.
The next part of the presentation highlighted all the CPR:2024 product families’ subgroups, plus three horizontal subgroups –
fire, hazardous substances and environmental sustainability – with post-installed fasteners found in family 33, ‘Fixings’.
The groups marked with a yellow circle (image to the right) already have work underway at various stages – with the goal to address all product families by 2028. The work plan has also set 2028 as the year in which work on drafting the Standardisation Requests for ‘Fixings’ will begin.
The working methodology is that unless input comes by CEN, a draft of Standardisation Request is prepared by the European Commission and submitted to the Member States for comments by certain dates and milestones.
The Standardisation Requests determine technical elements of the standards in advance, such as the list of product characteristics, the title, scope and purpose of future standards, as well as the boundary conditions (e.g which products, which materials, and which EADs will be included, and which will not).
Since 2024 ECAP has been actively involved in the Timber Connectors Subgroup, with its involvement made possible thanks to the initiative of the relevant CEN Technical Committee (CEN TC 124), which engaged the industry in two years of intensive discussion that led to the drafting of a Standardisation Request – taken as a first framework for Member States’ comments. The Standardisation Request also took on board the existing EADs on timber connectors.
A technical document originating from CEN is given preferential treatment by the European Commission, so the industry had a significant advantage in this Subgroup, proposing what’s in and what’s out of the standardisation process, especially considering that the rules governing participation in the work are rather restrictive (only one written input per Member State and per organisation).
On 15th January 2026, in a meeting between the European Commission and the two associations ECAP and CFE (Construction Fixings Europe), the European Commission made clear that the Standardisation Request for the product family ‘Fixings’ is going to be drafted in the same way as all other product families. It will incorporate the horizontal topics on fire, dangerous substances, and sustainability, defining the legal basis for the future standardisation of post-installed fasteners.
Having been informed that the process cannot be halted, we need to define its boundaries and timelines, turning a market disrupting change into the best possible solution. It will therefore be important for the industry to come prepared on what should be included in the Standardisation Request and what should be left out, as well as how to group families of post-installed fasteners and how to sensibly deal with the drafting of test standards based on existing EOTA material. It will be important to have all interested parties on board of the Acquis work, EOTA included.
1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52025DC0772
2 https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/circabc-ewpp/d/d/workspace/SpacesStore/2572aa70-30fe-4f5f-8aed-9c080b1fc2d9/download