ANALYSIS: Slow recovery of the European construction market

The state of the European construction industry will remain difficult in the next period as well given that most markets monitored by Euroconstruct continue to be in recession. According to the latest data released by the organization, a decline of almost 3% will be recorded in the European construction market during this year, while a slight recovery (+0.5%) will take place in 2014. For 2015, the forecasts released by Euroconstruct indicate an increase of 1.7% of the industry. Developments are, however, insignificant when compared to the sharp declines that happened during the recession. From the structural point of view, the data indicate a significant rebound in the residential domain (new projects and renovations), which will increase by 3.5% in the interval 2012-2015. However, in the next two years, the market of engineering works will increase by more than 1.7% and the one of non-residential construction will record a growth of up to 1%. The European road and rail infrastructure certainly needs a sustainable development, a fact recognized also by the profile associations from the continent. Moreover, experts from the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) have recently published a report on the main aspects that define the European long-term plan in this direction. According to the released information, the road infrastructure has almost 60.000 km of highways out of the total 5 million km of roads, while rail infrastructure comprises 215.000 kilometres, of which 107.400 are electrified. Given the demographic changes which are forecasted for the period between 2010 and 2030, the experts estimate the costs of road and rail infrastructure development in Europe to be around 1.500 billion EUR. Of this amount, approximately 550 billion EUR will be used until 2020, and almost 215 billion EUR are intended to solve major problems. Given the expected level of investment, the existing plan should be implemented in close cooperation with government authorities in each state. Clearly, any long-term goal related to infrastructure must take into consideration the current requirements of sustainability. For further information and a detailed analysis of the current Agenda Constructiilor issue click here!