The European Commission has presented a proposal for a new Regulation on public procurement to simplify the regulatory framework, reduce administrative burdens and make greater use of public spending to support competitiveness.
The reform would replace the three 2014 Directives with a single, directly applicable Regulation, reducing regulatory fragmentation and simplifying procedures, which would be reduced from five to three. Among the key changes is the creation of a European Digital Marketplace for public procurement, based on the interconnection of e-procurement platforms and the ‘once-only’ principle, to avoid the repeated submission of the same data and documents. The proposal also places greater emphasis on quality in the award process: the ‘Best Price-Quality Ratio’ would become the standard method, with minimum quality criteria set at 30 per cent, rising to 50 per cent for labour-intensive contracts.
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