Brussels Sets Procurement Quality Floor

Governments across Europe spend roughly 14–15% of GDP each year on public contracts: hospital software, bus fleets, cleaning services, road works and the ordinary machinery that turns taxes into services (European Parliament, European Commission). In Malta, this is not a distant Brussels file. Public procurement is where a road in Mosta gets resurfaced, a health IT system is bought, or a cleaning contract ends up shaping wages for workers who have little bargaining power.

Today, much of that money still goes to the lowest compliant bidder. On 9 September, the European Commission is expected to propose a change to what "value for money" means.

A draft leaked to Italian and German media would require public buyers to score quality alongside price, while giving them tools to favour suppliers with a European link (ANSA, Il Fatto Quotidiano). This is still only the beginning of the legislative process. The European Parliament and the Council must approve it, and tenders already in motion remain governed by existing rules (Vergabevorschriften.de).

The legal form matters. The Commission wants a regulation, not a directive. A directive would require each member state to pass its own implementing law, which can take years and often produces uneven results. A regulation applies directly across the EU once adopted, including in Malta.

Cheapest-bid buying has been losing, not winning

The evidence behind the reform is not hard to read. 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. Over the same period, the average number of bidders nearly halved, from 5.7 to 3.2 (European Court of Auditors). In 2023, 20 member states still awarded more than half their contracts on price alone (European Parliament).

The cost often ends up with workers. The European Parliament cited a European Labour Authority finding that price-only tenders increase the risk of undeclared work, because contractors cut labour costs to win (European Parliament). The Commission's own 2025 evaluation reached a similar diagnosis from another angle: the existing rules only partly delivered on environmental and social goals, cross-border participation remained limited, and poor data left corruption risks harder to detect (European Commission).

For a small state such as Malta, those weaknesses are amplified. A contract that looks minor in a large country can shape an entire local market here. If the cheapest bid becomes the normal route to public work, it affects wages, standards and competition far beyond the tender notice.

How the scoring would actually work

In a price-only tender, the cheapest compliant bid wins. Under quality-weighted scoring, the public buyer sets a formula. A tender might give 60 points for quality and 40 for price. The winner is the bidder with the best combined score.

The leaked draft would require quality factors such as climate performance, labour standards, innovation and security to account for at least 30% of the award score. For labour-intensive contracts, including construction, cleaning and security, the minimum would rise to 50% (Il Fatto Quotidiano, LavoriPubblici). A company relying mainly on lower wages would lose some of its advantage. A bidder with better working conditions or lower costs over the full life of a project 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 50% of 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, that tool is aimed mainly at Chinese suppliers in strategic sectors. The EU has already tested the approach. Its first measure under the International Procurement Instrument excluded Chinese operators from medical-device tenders, and China retaliated immediately with a matching response (Crowell).

The split over who gains and who pays

France sees procurement as an industrial policy weapon (L'Opinion). Italy wants to weaken the cheapest-bid habit and give workers more protection. Poland's Solidarność trade union called it "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 raise prices. They urged the Commission to limit the tool to specific sectors and back it with a full impact assessment (MarketScreener, Euronews).

German procurement lawyers point to a more practical weakness: many municipal offices do not have the capacity to write legally robust quality criteria covering climate, labour and innovation claims (Ausschreibungen Staatsanzeiger). That is the reform's pressure point. Quality scoring only works when public buyers can define measurable standards and check whether bidders deliver what they promise.

Without that capacity, the EU risks replacing underpricing with overpromising. It could also favour large incumbents that know how to score well on paper, while smaller firms struggle with heavier tender documentation.

The case against cheapest-price procurement is strong: it has not delivered enough competition, and it has encouraged pressure on labour costs. Whether a mandatory quality floor fixes that depends on whether thousands of contracting authorities across Europe, including Malta's own public buyers and kunsilli lokali, can do work they have often never been properly equipped to do.