The Builder's Ten Year Guarantee Across Europe, and Why It Barely Exists in Britain

If you commission building work in France, Spain, Italy, Belgium or Portugal, the law puts a long structural guarantee on your side whether or not anyone writes it into the contract. In France it is the garantie decennale: ten years of builder liability for anything that threatens the solidity of the structure, backed by insurance the builder must hold before the first block is laid. Spain has the seguro decenal under the Ley de Ordenacion de la Edificacion. Italy has article 1669 of its Codice Civile. Belgium made ten year insurance compulsory in 2018. This is the single most useful vetting tool a foreign owner has, because a builder who cannot produce the insurance certificate is telling you something important about whether they are real.

Britain, Ireland and the other common law countries have nothing like it. There is no statutory ten year guarantee, no compulsory builder insurance, and your protection comes from the contract you signed plus a patchwork of schemes. That gap matters most to the people least likely to know about it: Britons and other foreigners buying or renovating in Europe, who assume a builder is a builder everywhere. They are not. Here is how the systems differ, country by country, and exactly what to ask for before you hand over a deposit.

What 'decennial' liability actually means

The word decennial just means ten year. The idea comes from Roman and Napoleonic law and runs through every civil law country in Europe in some form. The principle is simple and strict: once a building is handed over, the people who built it stay liable for serious structural failures for a fixed number of years, and in most systems they are liable de plein droit, meaning by operation of law. You do not have to prove they were careless. You only have to show the defect exists, that it is serious enough to fall under the guarantee, and that it appeared inside the period. The builder can escape only by proving an outside cause, such as your own interference or an act of God.

That is already far stronger than a normal contract claim. What makes the best systems stronger still is that the liability is insurance backed. If the builder has gone bust, retired or vanished by the time a crack opens up in year seven, the insurer pays. That is the whole point, and it is exactly the moment when an uninsured British homeowner discovers their builder was a sole trader who dissolved the company two years ago.

France: the garantie decennale and its two shorter cousins

France has the most developed system in Europe, built on the Spinetta law of 1978. Under article 1792 of the Code civil, every constructor of a work is liable, by operation of law, for damage that compromises the solidity of the structure or makes it unfit for its purpose. That liability runs for ten years from the reception des travaux, the formal handover. It covers the frame, foundations, roof, and anything that renders the building unusable.

France stacks two shorter guarantees underneath it. The garantie de parfait achevement lasts one year and covers any defect flagged at handover or during that first year, of any kind. The garantie biennale, or garantie de bon fonctionnement, lasts two years and covers equipment that can be detached from the structure, such as boilers, radiators and shutters. So you get one, two and ten year layers running at once.

Crucially, the builder must carry assurance decennale insurance and must hand you the attestation before work starts. This is not optional. As service-public.gouv.fr sets out, starting a project without the cover is a criminal offence carrying a fine of up to 75,000 euros. The client side has a matching product, the assurance dommages-ouvrage, which pays for repairs quickly and then recovers from the builder's insurer. If a French builder cannot show you an in date attestation decennale naming the exact type of work, stop there.

Spain: the LOE and the seguro decenal

Spain codified its guarantees in the Ley 38/1999 de Ordenacion de la Edificacion, the LOE. It sets three periods that run from completion of the building. There is a ten year guarantee for structural defects that affect the foundations, beams, floor slabs, load bearing walls or other elements that compromise the building's mechanical resistance and stability. There is a three year guarantee for defects that affect habitability, such as damp, insulation or waterproofing. And there is a one year guarantee for finishing defects, which falls on the contractor directly.

For the structural ten year period, the LOE requires a seguro decenal, a decennial insurance policy, for new residential buildings put up by a promoter. The developer must arrange it and it protects successive owners, not just the first buyer. In practice this means that when you buy a newer Spanish flat, the structural cover often already exists and transfers to you. For a self commissioned villa the picture is more variable, so ask specifically whether a seguro decenal is in place and who the insurer is.

Italy: article 1669 and the postuma decennale

Italy's ten year rule sits in article 1669 of the Codice Civile. Where a building intended to last shows, within ten years of completion, total or partial collapse, evident danger of collapse, or gravi difetti, serious defects, the builder is liable to the client and to their successors in title. You must give notice within one year of discovering the defect, and sue within one year of that notice, so the discovery deadlines are tight even though the liability window is long.

On top of the code, Italy has a compulsory insurance layer for one specific and common situation. Under legislative decree 122 of 2005, a builder selling a property still to be built, or bought off plan, must give the buyer a ten year indemnity policy, the polizza postuma decennale, covering the damage described in article 1669. The buyer is the named beneficiary, so the cover works even if the builder later fails. For a completed home bought from a developer, ask whether the postuma decennale exists and request the policy document.

Belgium: the decennale and the loi Peeters

Belgium has long had a responsabilite decennale under articles 1792 and 2270 of its old Civil Code, mirroring the French model: ten years of liability for architects and builders for defects affecting the stability and solidity of a structure. What it lacked until recently was compulsory insurance, and there was an unfair quirk where architects had to be insured but contractors did not, which the Constitutional Court struck down in 2007.

The loi Peeters, the law of 31 May 2017, fixed that. Since 1 July 2018, all construction actors, contractors, architects and other providers, must insure their ten year liability for work on homes where an architect's involvement is compulsory and the planning permit was granted after that date. The Belgian federal economy service (SPF Economie) explains the regime and the minimum cover levels. The intent was blunt: make sure the homeowner is paid even if the responsible firm has gone bankrupt ten years on. Ask a Belgian builder or architect for their attestation loi Peeters.

Portugal: five years for the structure

Portugal is the moderate case. Under article 1225 of the Portuguese Codigo Civil, where a contract covers a building or other immovable intended to last, and within five years of delivery it collapses wholly or partly, or shows serious defects, from soil or construction faults or execution errors, the builder is liable to the owner and to any third party who buys the property. So the structural guarantee period is five years, not ten, and there is no equivalent compulsory decennial insurance. Notice must be given within one year of discovery, and the claim brought within the following year. Ordinary, non structural work defects carry the shorter guarantees in the same section of the code.

Germany: no decennale, a five year defects window instead

Germany, despite being a civil law country, took a different path. There is no decennale and no compulsory builder insurance. Instead the BGB, the civil code, treats building work as a Werkvertrag, a contract for works, and gives you a defects liability period, the Gewaehrleistung. Under section 634a BGB, claims for defects in a Bauwerk, a building, are limited to five years, running from the Abnahme, the acceptance of the work.

The practical differences from the French model are large. Five years, not ten. It is a limitation period on contract claims rather than a strict liability regime, so who you can sue depends on your contract chain. And there is no insurance standing behind it, so if your builder is insolvent when a defect surfaces, the five year right is often worthless. The one lever is that the period does not start to run in a builder's favour where they fraudulently concealed a defect. German buyers who want more usually negotiate a Gewaehrleistungsbuergschaft, a defects guarantee bond, or retain part of the price.

The UK and common law: why it barely exists

Britain has no statutory decennale, no compulsory builder insurance, and no strict structural guarantee that runs with the property. Your protection is a patchwork. First, the contract, which is only as good as the solvency of the firm you signed with. Second, the Defective Premises Act 1972, which requires dwellings to be built in a workmanlike manner and fit for habitation, and which the Building Safety Act 2022 recently extended: the limitation period is now 15 years for work completed after 28 June 2022, and up to 30 years retrospectively for older work. That sounds strong, but it is a right to sue, not an insurance backed guarantee, and if the builder is gone the right is hollow.

Third, private schemes fill the gap voluntarily. New build homes usually come with a warranty such as the NHBC Buildmark, typically two years of builder cover and a further eight years of structural insurance, and lenders often insist on one. For one off projects there is standalone latent defects insurance, which owners must choose to buy. Ireland, Scotland and the other common law jurisdictions sit in broadly the same place: contract plus schemes, no mandatory decennale. The upshot is that a continental owner is protected by default, while a British owner is protected only to the extent they arranged it themselves. For a Briton renovating a house in the Dordogne or buying new build on the Costa del Sol, that is a live and often unpleasant surprise.

The systems side by side

How to use decennial cover as a vetting test

The insurance requirement is a filter, and a very good one. A serious continental builder holds decennial cover as a matter of course and can produce the certificate in minutes. A cowboy cannot, because insurers will not write the policy for a firm with no track record or no real trading history. So asking for the attestation does two jobs at once: it secures your ten years of protection, and it quietly screens out the builders you should not be hiring.

• Ask for the certificate before work starts, not after. In France it is a legal precondition, and everywhere it is a fair test of professionalism.
• Read the activities listed. A decennale policy covers named trades and works. If your job is a roof and the policy lists only plastering, you are not covered for the roof.
• Check the dates. Cover must be valid for the period your work is carried out and handed over, since the ten years run from handover.
• Verify the insurer, not just the paper. Certificates are forged. Confirm the policy number directly with the insurer or broker named on it.
• Ask whether it transfers. The strongest systems protect future buyers too, which matters if you may sell inside the guarantee window.
• In Germany or the UK, where there is no compulsory scheme, ask instead about a defects bond, retention, or latent defects insurance, and budget for it yourself.

This is why Veted treats decennial and equivalent cover as a core vetting signal when we list general contractors, architects and structural engineers across France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and Germany. A builder's willingness and ability to show the right insurance certificate tells you more about whether they are a safe pair of hands than any amount of marketing. Learn the name of the guarantee in the country you are building in, ask for the paper, and check it. It is the closest thing European law gives you to a warranty on the roof over your head.