Julia Bachtrögler at the 86th Euroconstruct Conference

The construction sector in the 19 member countries of the Euroconstruct research network continues to develop dynamically: this was the assessment of the experts present at the 86th Euroconstruct Conference in Paris in November, which was attended by numerous representatives of international construction companies and stakeholders associated with the construction industry. Positive annual growth is expected until 2021, with growth rates expected to decline from year to year following the record high of 4.1 percent in 2017. For 2018, overall growth in the construction sector is estimated at 2.8 percent.

Broken down by construction sector, the largest expansion could be observed in residential construction in 2016 and 2017, especially in new residential construction, which is still below the pre-crisis level in Europe. Nevertheless, a change at the top of the growth achieved by the individual sectors appears to be emerging from 2018. The reason for this is the expected strong growth impetus in civil engineering, a large part of which will come from the public sector.

In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, construction forecasts for the coming years are below the average for the 19 Euroconstruct countries (the largest increases are expected for the Eastern European markets). While the growth rates in Austria and Switzerland are slowly declining, but according to forecasts will remain positive until 2021, a decline in construction investments at a high level is predicted for Germany for the first time in 2020 after a long expansion phase. The expected development in Austria and Switzerland, with the highest growth rates forecast for civil engineering until 2021, reflects the European trend.

To the Euroconstruct website