Every year, public authorities in the EU spend around 14% of GDP (over EUR 2.4 trillion per year) on purchasing services, works and supplies. In many sectors such as energy, transport, waste management, social protection and the provision of health or education services, public authorities are the principal buyers. Around 48% of European Structural and Investment Funds are spent via public procurement:
In the end of 2024 the Commission has launched an evaluation of three legislative acts that regulate public procurement in the EU (‘how to buy’): Directives 2014/23/EU (the Concessions Directive), 2014/24/EU (the Public Procurement Directive) and 2014/25/EU (the Utilities Directive) to assess their performance and impact across the EU, whether they remain fit for purpose, deliver on their intended objectives at minimum cost and are adequate to address current challenges.
The evaluation will cover a period of 8 years (2016-2024) and all EU Member States and the EEA countries and will include an in-depth analysis of competition in the EU public procurement market.
Public procurement is a crucial issue for the engineering profession and addressing current societal challenges require excellent engineering solutions and thus depend on open and quality- oriented procurement procedures for planning and design services. Inappropriate procurement procedures have a strong negative impact on quality, cost certainty, time reliability and overall successful implementation of public projects.
Therefore – based on the feedback of national member organisation - the ECEC has submitted its experiences in the 12-week public consultation that was closed on 7 March. The additional targeted consultations to collect quantitative and qualitative data from different categories of stakeholders are going on and a factual summary report on the consultation is expected for May 2025.
ECEC - MAIN FACTS AND POINTS for the PUBLIC PROCURMENT DIRECTIVES EVALUATION
New sector intellectual (including engineering) services: Due to the specific nature of intellectual services, the complexity of interactions, and the interdependencies among participants, a special chapter for intellectual services is required in the Public Procurement Directive. The current legal situation does not correspond to the nature of intellectual services and thus seriously jeopardizes the quality of the results of the procedure.
Quality competition for intellectual engineering services: Quality instead of prize competition must become obligatory for intellectual services such as engineering services. Only this can ensure the best as well as most economical solutions and guarantee public health and safety.
Negotiated procedure: Due to the high complexity of engineering services and the information asymmetry between service providers and clients the negotiated procedure should be the standard procedure for the awarding of engineering services.
No more excessive capacity requirements: SMEs play an important role in ensuring economic growth and innovation. Their participation in procurement procedures is therefore important for the economy and for society. Thus, quantitative references such as turnover figures, number of employees, number of references built that can hinder their access to public procurement should be adequate.
Abnormally low tenders: Abnormally low tenders have a negative impact on the high-quality standards of engineering services A common procedure should be established at the EU level, obliging contracting authorities based on studies of independent bodies about scope and remuneration of engineering services - to systematically assess whether a tender constitutes an abnormally low offer.
Methods for calculating the estimated value of procurement for planing services: To avoid inadequate procedures and access barriers when calculating the contract value, only similar planning services should be added together. Additionally, contracting authorities need to ensure a clear project assessment plan and base their decisions on up-to-date and relevant market information, which includes considering current market prices for the goods, services or work being procured.
Eligibility to apply for a review of tender and competition documents: Implementing the right of professional institutions to apply for review of tender and competition documents before the court would lead to a fundamental improvement in the quality of public procurement in general.
Payment: Payment structures for engineering services that are linked to conditions beyond the actual scope of service performance (e.g., linking supervision service payments to the contractors progress) must be forbidden.
Revision of prices: The Directive should require that public contracts include price revision clauses that are clearly, precisely, and unambiguously stated from the outset in the bidding documents.
No framework agreement: Framework agreements tie up key personnel who could productively in other projects and force contractors to submit offers that cannot be reliably calculated. (Especially) Intellectual services should therefore not be awarded by means of a framework agreement.
Adequate thresholds: The current EU thresholds no longer do justice to European and global political circumstances such as high inflation. Particularly in view of the complex, expensive and long EU-wide procurement process the threshold value needs to be increased in line with the EU priorities of more competitiveness and less bureaucracy.
Tackling the problem of late payment: In context with the evaluation of public procedure it is important to also tackle the problem of late payment as in terms of payment times, in some countries public-sector clients are still among the worst payers, despite the crucial importance of public-sector contracts.