European Parliament adopts resolution on public procurement

On 9 September 2025, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on public procurement (2024/2103(INI), hereafter: the Resolution) in which it outlines its priorities for the upcoming revision of the EU public procurement directives. The Resolution identifies several strategic objectives, main challenges, areas for improvement and several recommendations. The Resolution also highlights the importance of a further digitalisation of public procurement.

Strategic objectives

The European Parliament’s recommendations regarding the strategic objectives outlined in the Resolution can be summarised as follow:

• Simplification and efficiency: Simplify the application of the rules, move away from excessively lengthy procedures, and streamline and clarify the focus of public procurement goals. It explicitly calls for a reduction of the current 476 articles, or 907 pages of law, to reduce bureaucracy and regulatory burdens.

• Strengthening EU strategic resilience: Reinforcement of Europe’s strategic resilience and economic security. Public procurement should be used to promote the development of critical and nascent industries in key sectors, and to anchor industrial capacity within the EU to address harmful dependencies.

• Balancing strategic goals and core principles: While public procurement can be a useful tool to reach strategic objectives, its primary function is to achieve the best value for public tax funds. The three guiding principles of public procurement - value for money over the entire life cycle, fair competition and anti-corruption measures - remain valid and should not be compromised.

• Promoting European preference (with safeguards): In response to global competition shaped by foreign subsidies and discriminatory practices, exploring how to introduce preference to European goods and services in targeted strategic sectors within the boundaries of legal certainty, transparency and fair competition is recommended.

• Accessibility: The reform should make public procurement more accessible for smaller actors, including SMEs and start-ups, while maintaining sufficient flexibility for contracting authorities to adapt procurement processes based on their specific needs.

• International Engagement: Public procurement processes must remain as open as possible and compliant with the EU’s WTO commitments, while also ensuring clear rules for the treatment of products and economic operators from non-EU countries.

Main challenges

The European Parliament outlines several challenges to take into account throughout the revision process of the public procurement directives:

• Inconsistent implementation and uneven playing field: Significant discrepancies remain between Member States in their implementation and enforcement of public procurement rules, discouraging cross-border bids and the participation of smaller businesses and social economy enterprises, which creates an uneven playing field.

• Decline in competition: Competition in public procurement has significantly declined over the past decade (see ECA Special Report). Complexity, excessive qualification criteria and increasing bureaucratic burden of procurement processes disproportionately affect SMEs and local businesses, dissuading them from participating and thereby reducing the diversity of bids.

• Limited use of strategic procurement: Contracting authorities implement strategic procurement to a very limited extent (the share of procedures using award criteria other than the price remains insignificant). This is due to a lack of legal certainty in the interpretation of the requirements.

• Burdensome and lengthy procedures: Procurement procedures have become increasingly complex and burdensome, creating unnecessary administrative hurdles that deter a diverse range of suppliers, including cross-border suppliers, from participating.

• Lack of transparency and inadequate enforcement: Transparency and enforcement in public procurement remain inadequate, as evidenced by persistently low publication rates for contract awards, limited accessibility to procurement data and ongoing risks of abuses, fraud and corruption.

• Challenges in subcontracting chains: Long and complex subcontracting chains can be used to escape legal responsibilities and pose numerous challenges for labour enforcement authorities. The current procurement directives do not provide contracting authorities with sufficient tools to effectively address the non-performance of public contracts. 

Areas for improvement

The European Parliament also identifies clear areas for improvement to address with the revised public procurement directives:

• Updating thresholds and streamlining procedures: Public procurement thresholds should be updated in light of the significant inflation and construction costs increase. The Commission is called upon to introduce a mechanism taking inflation rates into consideration.

• Ensuring autonomy and flexibility for public authorities: A clearer distinction between contracting authorities and public undertakings, to safeguard the freedom and autonomy of public authorities, is recommended. Procurement rules for public undertakings should be better aligned with commercial practices to ensure maximum flexibility.

• Addressing rigid formalism: A significant number of exclusions from public procurement procedures are due to minor formal irregularities. Regularisation or clarification of such minor irregularities should be the rule rather than the exception.

• Improving competition and data analysis: Some procurement procedures are rarely used due to their complexity and bureaucratic hurdles. Procurement data should be analysed in a comprehensive manner to identify and address the underlying causes of declining competition. Award criteria should be designed to promote fair competition, considering new entrants, start-ups, and SMEs.

Key recommendations 

The European Parliament concludes with several relevant key recommendations for the revision process: 

• Simplification and standardisation: Reduce and simplify the rules for both contracting authorities and bidders. Introduce uniform non-binding guidelines and standard contract section templates to create greater uniformity in tendering procedures while preserving national flexibility.

• Fair competition and market access: Streamline administrative processes to ease burdens and refine selection criteria while ensuring fair access for all bidders. Use sourcing practices prior to the design of calls for tender, simplify the selection criteria and modify requirements that disproportionately hinder newly established companies.

• Tackling unfair practices: Make full use of the EU’s trade defence toolbox, including the International Procurement Instrument and the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, to prevent unfair competition from non-EU countries. Introduce stronger measures to detect and address abnormally low tenders.

• Fostering social and environmental value: Move away from awarding contracts based solely on the lowest price. Encourage awards based on the best price-quality ratio (MEAT) and promote systematic integration of social and sustainability criteria in public procurement procedures.

• Professionalisation and support: Train contracting authorities, providing an adequate clarification of the use of non-price related criteria. Enhance support mechanisms for very small entities, SMEs, start-ups, and social economy actors to enable them to effectively compete in public tenders.

• Addressing procedural and legal issues: Concrete actions should be put forward to combat corruption and increase transparency in negotiated procedures. Exclusion criteria should be revised to better address specific sectoral risks and for the establishment of a general principle allowing for the regularisation or clarification of minor irregularities in tenders.

• Subcontracting: Strengthen transparency and accountability throughout the supply chain to end abusive subcontracting and consider introducing a well-defined regime for joint and several liability of economic operators and subcontractors while ensuring transparency regarding the subcontractors involved and the share of the contract that the contractor intends to subcontract.

• Public-Public cooperation: Increase flexibility in public-public partnerships and consider exempting cooperation between public authorities, for the purpose of efficient task fulfilment, from the scope of the procurement directives.

Digital transformation of European public procurement

The European Parliament strongly believes that digitalisation must remain a key element in lowering costs and streamlining public procurement for both contracting and bidding entities, particularly for SMEs. To fully harness this potential, the Commission and Member States must not simply digitalise existing lengthy analogue processes but rather rethink how future procurement legislation can safely facilitate and secure digitalisation from the start. This includes ensuring that public procurement platforms are accompanied by updated and clear guidelines and that support and training are provided for contracting authorities on the use of digital tools.

The Parliament calls on the Commission to adopt a digital-first approach in its reform of the legal framework, focusing on automating and ensuring the interoperability of processes. This would involve a transition from an outdated notification-based system to a transaction-based system, reducing the number of electronic forms and better integrating tools such as the European single procurement document (ESPD) and eCertis. This transition, which would be particularly beneficial for SMEs, is seen as a way to enhance real-time data capture, streamline processes, and allow for better data utilisation.

Furthermore, the resolution stresses that establishing a pan-EU procurement data architecture with reliable, structured data collection is crucial for driving better intelligence and performance. It welcomes the Commission’s initiative for a European public procurement data space (PPDS) and requests that the Commission explore options for a digital passport for SMEs to promote their participation. The Parliament also calls for the enforcement of uniform cybersecurity standards, aligned with the Cyber Resilience Act and the NIS2 Directive, across all relevant EU public procurement legislation, and for harmonised electronic identification and authentication processes across Member States to ensure secure, efficient, and trusted digital procurement. 

Finally, the Resolution highlights the potential of the GovTech procurement model to provide public entities with rapid access to tailor-made digital solutions, while also supporting a digital-oriented public procurement reform.

Next steps

This Resolution is an own-initiative report (INI), a non-legislative act of the Parliament. It serves as a strong statement of the Parliament’s expectations and priorities for the revision of the procurement directives, but it does not create any legal obligations for the Commission, the Member States, or any other party.

It remains to be seen if or to what extent these priorities will be reflected in the Commissions’ proposal. Follow us for more information on this evolving topic.