Solution under private law – Manufacturer’s Declaration and requirements documents

The CE marking does not provide any indication as to if and how a construction product may be used.

Since ECJ judgment C-100/13 at the latest, national supplementary requirements that go be-yond the characteristics specified in the harmonized product standards may be specified nei-ther in the application standards nor in the general type approvals. Nevertheless, the usability of the products must continue to be ensured by the intermeshing of product, design and appli-cation standards.

Based on section D3 of the Model Administrative Provision on Technical Building Rules (Mus-terverwaltungsvorschrift Techni-sche Baubestimmungen; MVV TB), a system has therefore been developed which enables all requirements on building products to be agreed under pri-vate law, the objective being to maintain the established level of safety in Germany (on a vol-untary basis). According to section D3, the manufacturer may thus provide, in addition to the Declaration of Performance according to the Construction Products Regulation (CPR), addi-tional (voluntary) information (in the form of a Manufacturer’s Declaration) that goes beyond the CE marking, and may (voluntarily) declare that the building product has all the character-istics needed to comply with the structural requirements in Germany.

So-called requirements documents are developed, agreed, and finally published by product-specific expert panels. They summarize all of the above-mentioned performance specifica-tions relevant for the building product with regard to the structural requirements to be met from the European harmonized essential characteristics, the nationally required (additional) characteristics, and the national rules of usage.

If the user orders a building product with reference to a requirements document, this becomes the basis of the contract as a result, and the manufacturer automatically guarantees that the product meets the specifications laid down in the requirements document. Upon request, the manufacturer will additionally issue a separate Manufacturer’s Declaration.