The European Commission presented a package of measures on Wednesday intended to overhaul public procurement across the bloc by creating a unified digital platform and replacing three existing directives with one regulation. The proposal aims to reduce administrative burdens for companies and give contracting authorities greater scope to prioritize strategic and security considerations when awarding contracts.
Public procurement represents roughly 15% of the European Union's gross domestic product and is estimated to total about 2.5 trillion ($2.91 trillion) in 2025. Critics have argued the EU has not used this purchasing power effectively to support collective strategic objectives, a point raised by former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi and former Prime Minister of Italy Enrico Letta.
Under the Commission's proposal, the patchwork of templates, languages and duplicative procedures that companies currently face across the bloc's 27 member states - from national to regional levels - would be simplified. The new framework is intended to make it harder for authorities to award contracts based primarily on the lowest price, and to reduce the administrative friction that businesses, including small and medium-sized enterprises, encounter when bidding for public work.
"This is a radical simplification, as we are moving from three directives to a single regulation," Commission Executive Vice President St e9phane S e9journ e9 said in remarks to reporters. He framed the reform as part of a broader strategic shift to strengthen the internal market, saying: "We believe that part of the economic response and the shift in Europe's economic model also stems from the internal market and its strengthening...It is therefore a strategic lever at a time when, in particular, China, India, the United States and all the major powers are now using this lever for their own industrial and economic strategies," S e9journ e9 added.
The regulation would apply across nearly all sectors, with the explicit exception of defense. It would reduce the latitude that member states currently have in transposing EU procurement rules into national law. Contracting authorities would be encouraged, and in some cases required, to take into account risks relating to critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, supply-chain disruptions, strategic dependencies and foreign influence when deciding awards.
Procurement awards would be based on the "best price-quality ratio," with a mandate that quality criteria account for at least 30% of the total score. For contracts that are labor-intensive, that quality threshold would rise to at least 50% of the scoring weight. The shift is aimed at ensuring that factors beyond immediate price are systematically considered in procurement decisions.
While the measures stop short of imposing a general "Buy European" rule, the draft regulation would permit authorities to exclude bids if the tendered offer contains less than 50% European content by total value. It would also enable restrictions to limit access to EU operators only and to favor EU companies in specified strategic sectors. At the same time, the proposal states that countries with which the EU has trade agreements and reciprocal public procurement arrangements would not be excluded from participation.
On the digital front, the Commission envisions a single EU procurement system that includes electronic business credentials, interoperability rules for procurement platforms, and national and EU-level procurement data spaces. These elements are intended to increase transparency, facilitate oversight and improve cross-border access to contract opportunities.
S e9journ e9 emphasized the user-facing benefits of a unified system, noting businesses and SMEs would need only "a single registration on this platform, rather than having to register as many times as there are public tenders to respond to."
As drafted, the proposal represents a significant regulatory consolidation and a strategic reorientation of how public purchasing can be used to address supply-chain resilience and other security-related concerns, while retaining certain market access protections for trading partners with reciprocal arrangements.