Europe's upcoming revision of the Public Procurement Directives should address a growing problem in construction: excessive subcontracting that undermines workers, businesses and fair competition
The debate about Europe’s competitiveness often focuses on burdens, barriers and rules that should be removed. Construction offers a useful reality check.
The sector is central to Europe’s ambitions on affordable housing, climate resilience, the energy transition and infrastructure investment. Yet construction faces labour shortages, stagnant productivity, criminal infiltration and some of the highest workplace accident rates1 in the European Union. Innovation remains too slow and digitalisation too limited. Quite frankly, today’s construction sector is not up to the challenge.
The problem is not that construction is overregulated, but rather that some of the business practices that have become normal in the sector are undermining fair competition, responsibility and the quality of jobs. With the European Union revising its Public Procurement Directives, there is an opportunity to turn around a sector that is moving in the wrong direction.
Across Europe, construction sites tell stories about social dumping, bogus self-employment, labour exploitation, social security fraud, safety failures and fatal accidents where no responsibility can be placed. Construction is no ordinary sector.
