EU Sets Public Tender Quality Floor

Every year, European governments spend roughly 14–15% of GDP buying the unglamorous things that make the State visible: hospital software, bus fleets, cleaning contracts, road repairs (European Parliament, European Commission). Procurement is the point at which tax money stops being a budget line and becomes a service, a job, or a delayed project. For years, much of that money has gone to the cheapest compliant bidder. On 9 September, the European Commission is expected to propose changing what "value for money" means.

A draft reported in Italian and German outlets would require public buyers to mark bids on quality as well as price, and would give them new ways to favour suppliers with a European link (ANSA, Il Fatto Quotidiano). This is still only the opening move. The proposal will need the European Parliament and the Council to agree it, and tenders already under way will continue under the existing rules (Vergabevorschriften.de).

The legal form matters. The Commission is proposing a regulation rather than a directive. A directive tells member states what result they must achieve, then leaves each capital to pass its own implementing law. A regulation applies directly across the EU once adopted. That is the faster route, and it gives Dublin, Paris, Warsaw and every county council in between less room to drift.

Cheapest-bid buying has been losing, not winning

The case for changing the system is no longer just political. The European Court of Auditors found that the share of EU public tenders attracting only one bid rose from 23.5% to 41.8% in the decade to 2021, while the average number of bidders almost halved, from 5.7 to 3.2 (European Court of Auditors). In 2023, 20 member states were still awarding more than half their contracts on price alone (European Parliament).

That cheapness is often paid for somewhere else. The European Parliament cited a European Labour Authority finding that price-only tenders increase the risk of undeclared work, because contractors win by squeezing labour costs (European Parliament). The Commission's own 2025 evaluation said the current rules had only partly delivered on green and social aims, while cross-border bidding remained limited and gaps in data left corruption risks harder to police (European Commission).

How the scoring would actually work

Under a price-only tender, the cheapest compliant bid wins. Under quality-weighted scoring, the buyer sets a formula: for example, 60 points for quality and 40 for price. The contract goes to the bidder with the best combined score.

The leaked draft would require quality factors such as climate performance, labour standards, innovation and security to make up at least 30% of the award score. For labour-heavy contracts, including construction, cleaning and security, the floor would rise to 50% (Il Fatto Quotidiano, LavoriPubblici). A firm relying mainly on lower wages would lose some of its advantage. A firm offering better conditions or lower costs over the life of the contract could win even with a higher headline price.

The draft also contains a "European preference" tool. It would allow public buyers to penalise or exclude offers where less than half the value comes from the EU, or from countries covered by trade agreements such as the WTO's Government Procurement Agreement, which includes the US, Japan and Canada but not China (ANSA). In practice, the instrument is aimed mainly at Chinese suppliers in strategic sectors. The EU has already tried the approach: its first measure under the International Procurement Instrument excluded Chinese operators from medical-device tenders, and China retaliated immediately with its own restrictions (Crowell).

The split over who gains and who pays

France sees procurement as a strategic lever (L'Opinion). Italy wants to break the cheapest-bid habit and give workers more protection. Poland's Solidarność trade union welcomed what it called "the end of the lowest-price dictatorship" (Solidarnosc). Nine smaller and northern member states, led by Czechia, Finland and Sweden, warned in December 2025 that a broad European preference could reduce competition and push up prices. They urged the Commission to confine it to specific sectors and carry out a full impact assessment first (MarketScreener, Euronews).

German procurement lawyers have raised a more practical concern: many municipal offices do not have the staff or expertise to draft legally robust quality criteria across climate, labour and innovation claims (Ausschreibungen Staatsanzeiger). That is the weak point in the reform. Quality scoring works only when buyers can write measurable conditions and then verify what bidders promise. Otherwise, Europe risks swapping underpricing for overpromising, with the advantage going to large incumbents that know how to score well on paper.

The evidence against cheapest-price procurement is strong. It has not delivered healthy competition, and it has given contractors a clear reason to cut labour costs. The harder question is whether mandatory quality scoring can fix that when thousands of contracting authorities across Europe will suddenly be asked to do something many have never had to do before.