Building in Europe

The 75th Euroconstruct Conference, held in Copenhagen on 13 and 14 June this year, confirmed that 2012-2013 was a difficult period for all except three of the 19 member countries (Germany, Austria and Norway) and brought some substantial losses.

Overall, building activity suffered a 5.3% downturn in 2012 and a further decline is expected in 2013 (-2.8%). The prospects are better for 2014-2015, however, with many countries expected to stabilise or show clear signs of recovery. One of these is Spain, which after a very difficult period in which the residential sector alone saw a fall from 850,000 new houses built in 2006 to 60,000 in 2012, is expected to undergo strong recovery (up to 15-20%).

The European construction market is expected to improve in 2014 (+0.5%) and emerge from the crisis in 2015 (+1.7%). However, considerable differences remain between the fifteen Western European countries, where Euroconstruct is forecasting 1.6% growth in value in 2015, and the four Eastern European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), where the predicted growth rate is 3.7%.