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Build Europe

Soutenir et défendre les intérêts des promoteurs, des constructeurs et des aménageurs en Europe Réunir ses membres et les représenter au niveau européen Etudier les problèmes juridiques, techniques et économiques liés à la profession au niveau européen

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Matthew Baldwin (Deputy Director-General Energy)

9 Dec 2025 · Exchange of views on the construction sector

Meeting with Katharina Knapton-Vierlich (Head of Unit Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs)

7 Jul 2025 · Part of the consultation with major European Business associations within the construction ecosystem to gather input for the Strategy, in particular data and information on the main policy gaps requiring action

Meeting with Matthew Baldwin (Deputy Director-General Energy) and European Construction Industry Federation and

2 Jun 2025 · Housing, homelessness, social housing, sustainability, short term rental accommodations, construction

Meeting with Dirk Gotink (Member of the European Parliament)

30 Apr 2025 · Housing

Meeting with Julie Rechagneux (Member of the European Parliament)

29 Apr 2025 · Discussion autour de la commission HOUS

Meeting with Irene Tinagli (Member of the European Parliament, Committee chair)

9 Apr 2025 · Introductory meeting

Meeting with Ciaran Mullooly (Member of the European Parliament)

7 Apr 2025 · Housing issues

Meeting with Stefan Moser (Head of Unit Energy)

13 Mar 2025 · The European Affordable Housing Plan and the role of construction companies

Meeting with Matthew Baldwin (Deputy Director-General Energy)

13 Mar 2025 · Exchange of views on housing policy from the point of view of residential developers and house builders; presentation of the 6 pillars of the strategic outlook prepared by Build Europe.

Meeting with Isilda Gomes (Member of the European Parliament)

4 Mar 2025 · Housing Crisis in the European Union

Meeting with Isilda Gomes (Member of the European Parliament)

3 Feb 2025 · Housing Crisis in the European Union

Meeting with Ciarán Cuffe (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

14 Feb 2024 · Housing affordability

Meeting with Jan Olbrycht (Member of the European Parliament)

23 Jan 2024 · Housing affordability

Meeting with Marcos Ros Sempere (Member of the European Parliament)

23 Jan 2024 · Affordable housing

Meeting with Seán Kelly (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)

31 May 2023 · EPBD recast

Meeting with Seán Kelly (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and European Alliance to Save Energy and

31 Mar 2022 · The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive - Stakeholder Event

Response to Updating the EU Emissions Trading System

8 Nov 2021

Build Europe supports the EU’s environmental objectives and ambitions, and welcomes the objective to turn Europe into the first carbon neutral continent by 2050. Build Europe is concerned, however, the continuous introduction of additional environmental requirements could threaten housing affordability across Europe, unless strong financial incentives are put in place. The proposed directive would introduce an emissions trading system for buildings from 2026 targeting fuel suppliers. A direct consequence will be the increase of heating and housing costs for those tenants and homeowners across the EU depending on fuel suppliers. While Build Europe welcomes the proposal of a Social Climate Fund and the extension of the Innovation Fund to offset these rising costs among poorer households, this will only address part of the issue as only “a dedicated share of the revenues from the auctioning” will finance these funds. Families across Europe are facing rising energy and housing prices in the context of construction material and skilled workers shortages, and the Commission must be careful not to exacerbate an already tense situation. Earlier this year, the European Parliament voted a resolution on ‘Decent and affordable housing for all’, “which calls on the Member States to develop their house-building policies”. In its report ‘Building for a better tomorrow: Policies to make housing more affordable’, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) explains that Covid “will likely continue to affect housing affordability and vulnerability over the medium to long term” and that “home ownership is increasingly out of reach for young people in some countries”, especially in Italy, the Slovak Republic, and Greece. The proposed ETS thus risks to aggravate this situation. In that regard, the flexibility provided by Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) is also welcomed, although it remains to be seen to which extent the solutions can be widely deployed by operators in an affordable way. Build Europe would therefore support the initial introduction of ETS for buildings on a voluntary rather than mandatory basis. Build Europe also encourages the Commission to consider directing free allocation to fuels used in affordable housing in order to mitigate the initial price increase. The European Commission must ensure that the protection of the environment does not have the effect of making housing unaffordable as it is necessary to produce housing for all EU citizens.
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Response to Land use, land use change and forestry – review of EU rules

8 Nov 2021

Build Europe supports the EU’s environmental objectives and ambitions, and welcomes the objective to turn Europe into the first carbon neutral continent by 2050. Build Europe's full feedback is in the attachment. The current regulation requires Member States to ensure that the LULUCF sector does not generate net emissions. While Build Europe agrees with the objective of reducing CO2 emissions, it is also clear that the review of the regulation should not come at the expense of housing affordability in a context of growing inflation and in the wake of the most severe recession faced by Europe in its recent history. The proposed review risks to aggravate this situation. In its upcoming publication dedicated to the issue of No net land take, Build Europe suggests the following solutions to reduce land consumption: • Increasing urban density • Fostering land certificate trading systems • Fostering new green districts (urban farms, gardens, hedges…) • Increasing the reversibility of buildings • Promoting building on stilts • Promoting aid for the reconversion of urban wasteland • Bonus to demolish or convert offices into housing • Increasing the use of Integrated territorial investments Build Europe is particularly concerned by the reduction in land availability for homes that this review would entail. We understand that, under the proposed review, the scope of the LULUCF regulation would be widened to cover all types of land as of 2026. Build Europe is also worried by the more stringent 2026-2030 target to reach net removals of 310 million tonnes CO2 equivalent by 2030. While it is true that European forests could capture less CO2 in the future, the European Commission should not forget that forests and land-based sinks are not the only way to achieve carbon sequestration. As mentioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in its Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies Programme, carbon dioxide can be captured at its source and stored in non-atmospheric reservoirs. Moreover, new buildings already have very high energy performances, and can use renewable energy sources such as solar panels and/or geothermal energy. Modern districts also encompass more and more greenery that captures CO2 from the atmosphere. Land can therefore be used for housing in a quite sustainable way. These projects can also be structured to ensure CO2 reduction in a way that reduces traffic. This includes car-sharing, active mobility, storage via tree planting, and the construction of low-emission buildings. Some examples show that this can save one tonne of CO2 per dwelling per year. Moreover, biodiversity can be maintained by planting gardens, hedges, trees, and so on. Ambitious climate action can also be achieved by ensuring water infiltration, by planting trees, reducing heating and air-conditioning, etc. In France, for instance, 1,400,000 km of hedges were removed due to land consolidation. In summer, these trees had an evapotranspiration equivalent to the flow of the river Seine in Paris. The issue is therefore not to choose between agriculture and urbanisation, but to put forward new ways of building and urban planning. While Build Europe supports the idea of incentivising the use of wood in construction to fight the inflation of housing prices and progress towards climate neutrality, the review’s requirements to favour the use of wood as construction material in new buildings would reduce the choice range of operators and aggravate the ongoing construction material shortage that comes on top of the skilled workers shortage. Again, EU households will end up facing the costs of these excessive requirements. Build Europe therefore calls on the Commission to show more flexibility and incentivise Members States to use the flexibility provided by Article 12 and Article 13 to favour homebuilding and reduce the pressure on housing prices and rents. [Rest in attachment]
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Response to Revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2010/31/EU

19 Mar 2021

Please find attached Build Europe's feedback.
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Response to Green Paper on Ageing

11 Dec 2020

According to current demographic trends in terms of life expectancy and birth rates, by the 2060s the number of people aged over 60 could increase by more than 80% compared to current data. In order to respond to all the challenges raised by this profound demographic change, the European Commission will need to approach the issue from different angles and to anticipate the evolutions in different areas of our society. Build Europe, which represent European developers and homebuilders, believes that the European Commission will need to urgently address what the demographic change will mean for the housing sector. Along with an ageing population, Europe faces also the issue related to the current viral pandemics. The Covid-19 crisis changed people’s needs in terms of housing, along with their working habits. For this reason, the European Commission must take into account that its policies will need to guarantee quality affordable housing for the European citizens, to protect our senior citizens and make sure our families can live in a space where all their needs are satisfied and where they can have enough space to live collectively, work, and study. Build Europe has developed a series of proposals to address these challenges. In Italy, the Covid19 pandemics persuaded several senior citizens to move from cities to small and medium sized town, with smaller population density and bigger spaces in terms of housing. This trend should be incentivised all across Europe. This crisis could give Member States the opportunity to counterbalance previous trends that led to the desertification of territories in many parts of our countries. Outside big cities, there is no (or less) scarcity of land, which makes housing more affordable. However, the lack of infrastructures, equipment and services in these areas is a major obstacle. The European governments need to invest in small and medium sized cities, and allow the creation of new quality housing that can respond to the needs of EU citizens. Digitalisation is an important tool that can help Europe achieving this objective, as this crisis taught us that working and studying from remote is possible and give citizens the right to professionally realise themselves without being forced to leave their cities or towns unless they want to. For this reason, Build Europe believes it is key that the European Commission to invest in moving demand to small-medium towns and in the creation of new smart cities, where land is cheaper. Finally, when it comes to more tightly populated areas, Member States would need to deploy an active planning and development policy in order to cut the costs of reconstructing the city within the city, in order to guarantee to EU citizens new eco-friendly and affordable housing able to respond to their living and working needs.
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Meeting with Riccardo Maggi (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans)

22 Jan 2020 · Obstacles and opportunities for a renovations wave in the EU

Response to Evaluation of State aid rules for health and social services of general economic interest and SGEI De Minimis

12 Jul 2019

In recital 11 of its decision on Services of General Economic Interest (SGEI) on 20 December 2011 (2012/21/EU), the Commission stated that “undertakings in charge of social services, including the provision of social housing for disadvantaged citizens or socially less advantaged groups, who due to solvency constraints are unable to obtain housing at market conditions, should also benefit from the exemption from notification”. For Build Europe this recital 11 of the SGEI decision is of critical importance in protecting against potential unfair competition in different housing markets in Europe. On the whole, Build Europe believes in a genuine level playing field in the housing market. The concepts of ‘level playing field’ or ‘freedom of competition’ are not forms of ultra-liberal dogma; they are the means by which public and private actors can be made to compete in achieving the common good: affordable quality housing. This is why the European Union’s State Aid authorities must continue, and enhance, their crucial role, ensuring that state aid energises all market actors to compete in increasing the stock of affordable quality housing. State aid must, therefore, be equally available to all actors, irrespective of their public, semi-public or private status. In Europe, however, there are currently two types of social housing systems. The first is the closed system, where only a limited number of public or semi-public social companies may provide social housing directly to disadvantaged groups or citizens (eg in France and Belgium). Secondly, there are open systems, where private developers may also rent out and sell social housing directly on the market (eg in Germany and Spain). Build Europe believes that the Commission plays a crucial role in the closed systems, as it allows for the creation of a level-playing field, without unfair or distorted competition. In view of the two different systems that exist in the different Member States, Build Europe believes that the Commission should refrain from modifying recital 11 of its SGEI decision in relation to social housing. In the event the state aid rules be amended to remove the requirement of prior notification of state aid, for example to help a wider range of persons, this flexible approach should only apply to the open systems. Prior notification regulation should, in any event, be maintained in the closed systems, so that the Commission can continue to protect private developers and householding families against unfair competition on the primary European housing market. Finally, Build Europe calls for more efficient gap funding systems, to avoid being funded by first time buyers on the primary market. The burden for gap funding relating to the production of affordable housing (and social housing as a part of it) can be shifted to first time buyers and renters on the primary (new) private housing markets by a variety of housing policies at local, regional or national level. One such policy involves obliging private developers to allocate at least 20% of each new (urban/reconversion) project to affordable housing, with regulated prices, and without any compensation. Unfortunately, first time buyers and renters on the free primary market will often end up shouldering the cost of the policy, since losses on the regulated market accumulate land and housing prices on the free primary market. Sectoral research shows that there is little convincing evidence that physical intervention in cities, such as the purposeful mixing of socio-economic groups, based on the co-existence of private and “social” housing in the same area, contributes to solving inequality problems. In that respect, Build Europe believes that the policy focus needs to move towards welfare adjustments, rather than population adjustments.”
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Meeting with Soren Schonberg (Cabinet of Commissioner Margrethe Vestager)

3 Mar 2015 · EU State Aid & Social Housing

Meeting with Grzegorz Radziejewski (Cabinet of Vice-President Jyrki Katainen)

2 Mar 2015 · Industrial Policy