Laws, recommendations and best practices for enhancing masonry sustainability

Masonry constitutes a major share of European building stock, making its environmental performance increasingly relevant in the context of evolving EU decarbonization policies. This paper reviews current European legislation, technical standards, sustainability rating systems for buildings, and industry guidelines to assess how the sustainability concept for masonry materials and constructions is shaped. Market uptake is evaluated through Environmental Product Declarations, best practices, and exemplary projects. Results indicate a positive market reception of the legislation and a strong convergence toward life cycle thinking. Due to the significant embodied impact and material intensity associated with masonry buildings, achieving operational efficiency, superior thermal comfort through thermal mass, durability and extended service life is essential for improving their whole-life cycle environmental performance. The selected case studies confirm that building adaptation and reuse deliver the greatest environmental benefits by extending materials service life and amortizing embodied impacts, while preserving cultural and socio-economic values embedded in masonry heritage. EPDs can effectively guide decarbonization efforts, particularly when shifting from a mass‑ or volume‑based functional unit to a wall‑system metric that indirectly reflects operational performance. Misalignments include differing assumptions about the expected service life of masonry materials and the life span to consider in LCA studies, inconsistent attentional weighting to seismic vulnerability, and uncertainty regarding the quality and performance of reused materials or structures.