From 1 January 2027 every existing non-residential building in the EU with more than twenty parking spaces must have at least one charge point per ten spaces — or pre-cabling for half of them. Not a subsidy you can decline. An obligation with a date on it.
The recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EU/2024/1275) entered into force on 28 May 2024. Member States had until 29 May 2026 to write it into national law — that deadline has already passed. What follows is the directive's own text; your national implementation may be stricter or on a different date.
| Building | Requirement | From |
|---|---|---|
| Existing non-residential more than 20 parking spaces | 1 charge point per 10 spaces, or pre-cabling / conduit for at least 50% of spaces | 1 January 2027 |
| New & major renovation — non-residential | 1 charge point per 5 spaces | On completion |
| New & major renovation — offices | 1 charge point per 2 spaces | On completion |
| Public-authority buildings | Pre-cabling for 1 in 2 spaces | 2033 |
Offices, retail parks, shopping centres, hotels, restaurants, logistics and distribution, hospitals, clinics, schools, universities, sports and leisure venues, car parks. If staff or customers park there and it is not housing, assume it counts.
Enforcement sits with national and local authorities under each Member State's transposing law. Penalties, inspection regimes and exact dates are national, not European — check yours before budgeting.
The directive allows Member States to exempt cases where the cost of the charging and grid installation is disproportionate, and there are reliefs for SMEs occupying their own buildings. These are national choices, so verify before assuming you qualify.
Enter your parking count. This applies the directive's own ratios; if your Member State has gold-plated them, use your national figure instead.
Typical 22 kW commercial wallboxes sit between €1.000 and €1.500 excl. VAT before installation. Installation is excluded on both sides here — it is the same work whichever box you hang.
Hardware only, excl. VAT and installation. Load management (€ 19 per charger, one-time) is usually what lets a site add this many points without upgrading the grid connection — see below.
Twenty 22 kW charge points is 440 kW if they all draw at once. Almost no existing office or retail building has that headroom, and in much of Europe a connection upgrade is a multi-year queue rather than a cost.
Dynamic Load Management solves it by sharing whatever capacity the building actually has left across the chargers in real time, second by second. Cars charge slower at peak and full speed when the building is quiet — and the obligation is met without touching the connection.
On an e-flo charger DLM is a one-time € 19 per charger. It is not a subscription and not a licence.
"What is the spare capacity on the building's connection, in kW, at 5pm on a working day?"
If nobody on site knows, that is the first thing to measure. Every EPBD project that goes wrong goes wrong here — chargers arrive, the connection cannot feed them, and the installation stalls waiting on a grid operator.
Most commercial charge points carry a per-socket platform fee from day one. With e-flo the management platform is included — € 0 per charge point for its first 30 months, € 3 per month after, and a replaced charger starts a fresh free window.
Access control with no backend, no account and no contract. Enough for a building that simply needs to stop the public from charging for free.
Charging staff, tenants or visitors and recovering the cost needs a MID-certified meter to be legally valid. That is a € 89 one-time upgrade, not a different product line.
CE marked, EU warranty, and final assembly in the Netherlands. Origin matters in procurement and in several national grant schemes.
We don't overstock — no warehousing, no capital stuck in inventory, no write-offs. That is how a € 1.000+ charger costs € 699. Ten days from payment, with a confirmed schedule on volume orders.
Every charger speaks open OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1, with 4G standard, so a building can move to any provider in Europe later without replacing hardware.
The obligation attaches to the building, but who must act — owner, landlord or occupier — is set by each Member State's transposing law and often by the lease itself. Check the lease before assuming it is somebody else's problem; in many cases the cost is recoverable through service charges.
Anything that is not housing: offices, shops, hotels, restaurants, warehouses, factories, hospitals, schools, sports venues and standalone car parks. Mixed-use buildings are treated according to the non-residential part.
For existing non-residential buildings the directive allows ducting or conduit for at least 50% of parking spaces as an alternative to one charge point per ten. It is often cheaper up front and more expensive in total, because the trenching happens once either way and the chargers still get bought later. Compare both before choosing.
Dynamic Load Management shares the building's spare capacity across all the chargers, which is normally enough to meet the obligation without a grid upgrade. Measure the actual spare capacity first — it is usually more than people expect once the building's own peak is understood.
National, not European, and they vary widely. In the Netherlands SPRILA runs to 18 December 2026 for private charge points at businesses, first come first served, with roughly double the rate for SMEs. Austria's Investitionsfreibetrag covers charging infrastructure at 22% of investment until 31 December 2026. Both are separate from the EPBD obligation and both have deadlines earlier than it.
Set nationally, not by the directive. Member States must lay down penalties that are effective, proportionate and dissuasive, but the form varies — fines, enforcement notices, or conditions attached to building permits and energy certificates. Check your national implementation.
No. Article 14 concerns charge points at the building for the people who use it. Whether you open them to the public, and whether you charge for them, is a commercial decision — though doing so turns the obligation into a revenue line.
Yes, and for sites with public footfall it often does. Once chargers are installed for compliance, operating them commercially is a separate proposition — see the operator programme.
Turning the obligation into a working car park — payment flows, reimbursement, tax, load management and a 60-day rollout — is covered in the free 15-page guide Workplace charging: the employer's guide.