The ETA route to CE marking offers many construction product manufacturers a valuable alternative to CEN standardisation when no harmonised standard is available. This concerns mostly unique, innovative and complex products and systems placed on the market by SMEs. Over the past years, the ETA route to CE marking has been successful in stimulating the internal market for construction products, reducing technical barriers to trade, relieving administrative burdens and providing a common technical language to construction professionals across Europe. More than 4200 ETAs of more than 1300 different manufacturers are currently valid. A repeal of the ETA route would definitely result in increased costs which might lead to serious sales drops for concerned manufacturers, a significant
number of them being SMEs.
CFE, together with other European associations like the European Construction Industry Federation (FIEC), Construction Products Europe (CPE), Small Business Standards (SBS), Construction SMEs Europe (EBS), Engineered Construction Systems (ECS) and European Organisation for Technical Assessment (EOTA), has signed an open letter to the SCC, the European Commission and members of the European Parliament which expresses the importance of the EOTA route in the context of the upcoming CPR revision.