The European Commission has adopted a proposal to modernise and simplify the EU’s public procurement framework to support effective investments in public services and infrastructure.
The proposal for a new Regulation could deliver significant administrative annual savings of €650 million, says the EU executive, resulting from a burden reduction of €80 million for public buyers and of €570 million for economic operators.
“Europe spends hundreds of billions of euros through public procurement every year. This money must work harder for Europe”, said EC executive vice-president Stéphane Séjourné: “With this reform, we are cutting bureaucracy, giving public buyers more flexibility and making it easier for our SMEs to compete across the Single Market. And we are making a clear political choice: European public money should, wherever possible, create jobs, investment and opportunities in Europe rather than filling the order books of our competitors.”
Public procurement covers everything from transport, infrastructure, and energy systems, to schools and health care services. The proposal follows consultations with public buyers, businesses, trade unions, and civil society, and would lead to significant reform to make public procurement simpler, more flexible, and more effective.
A proposed Public Procurement Act consolidates into one directly-applicable Regulation three existing public procurement directives and procurement provisions currently spread across sector-specific legislation. This will create a more coherent and predictable procurement framework, according to the Commission, reducing complexity, administrative burden and inconsistencies in how the rules are applied with three procedures instead of five currently.
The new framework gives public buyers greater flexibility, encourages better market consultation, simplifies administrative procedures and allows for negotiations, making public procurement more similar to private procurement. It also introduces an innovation procedure for the development and acquisition of innovative solutions not yet available on the market.
A new integrated digital procurement marketplace consisting of interconnected and interoperable Member States’ eProcurement platforms will helping tor reduce red tape, says the Commission.
The digital marketplace will simplify and facilitate procurement for public buyers (for example, through the automatic verification of exclusion criteria). It will allow companies to take part in procurement procedures and submit tenders across the EU through any of the connected eProcurement platforms applying the ‘once-only’ principle, avoiding repeated requests for information and documentation requirements. This will promote access to new business opportunities and increase the number of offers public buyers receive, maximising the potential of the single market.
The digital marketplace will moreover streamline data exchanges between Member States’ eProcurement systems through the creation of a unified framework for data management, thereby strengthening transparency, accountability, and anti-fraud capabilities.
The proposal makes the Best Price-Quality Ratio (BPQR) the standard award method, with quality criteria accounting for at least 30% (50% for labour-intensive contracts), subject to a ‘comply or explain’ mechanism. Contracting authorities may deviate from this approach if they explain how quality will otherwise be ensured, for example through minimum quality requirements.
So public buyers will have to systematically consider not only price, but also quality, including environmental, social, innovation, security and resilience, and ‘European preference’ considerations. Public buyers will have full discretion over which quality criteria to apply and in which proportion in individual procurement procedures, with the proposal offering practical tools to support public buyers in this.
The proposal reflects the growing geopolitical importance of public procurement, enabling, and in some cases requiring, public buyers to address risks related to security and public safety of the Union or Member States, sensitive information, cybersecurity, and undue third-country influence.
New provisions on resilience and security of supply would apply to contracts involving entities linked to critical infrastructures and aim to support diversification of supply chains, security of supply and crisis preparedness.
Finally, the Regulation introduces a horizontal European preference framework for public procurement in line with the EU’;s international legal obligations. It clarifies which operators and products are covered by the EU’s international procurement commitments and makes this easier to check. The Commission would be able to restrict such coverage where a market access analysis establishes that a third country has failed to grant Union operators fair market access in line with its commitments, or where restrictions are needed to avoid security of supply dependencies or protect our economic security interests.
