EU Public Procurement Act: what the Commission proposal means for bidders

On 9 September 2026 the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on public contracts and concessions (COM(2026) 590 final, procedure 2026/0265 (COD)), branded the Public Procurement Act. It would repeal the public sector Directive 2014/24/EU, the utilities Directive 2014/25/EU and the concessions Directive 2014/23/EU, and fold procurement provisions scattered across sectoral acts into one instrument.

The choice of instrument is the headline. Directives are transposed into national law, which is why every Member State has its own procurement act. A Regulation applies directly: once it applies, procedures, exclusion grounds and award criteria are read from the Regulation, and national law is confined to what the Regulation expressly leaves to Member States.

The Commission's case rests on declining competition. The European Court of Auditors found fewer bids per tender and a sharp rise in single-bid procedures over the last decade. Public procurement is roughly 15 % of EU GDP. The Commission estimates annual administrative savings of about EUR 650 million, of which EUR 570 million would accrue to economic operators.

A draft marked sensitive until adoption leaked on 9 July 2026 and was dissected across Europe over the summer, from law firm briefings to Albert Sánchez-Graells' verdict that the draft was 'irredeemably half-baked'. The official text of 9 September follows the leak closely on procedures, award criteria, European preference and digitalisation, with the most consequential clarification on in-house contracts, discussed below.

The file now enters the ordinary legislative procedure. No rapporteur has been named in Parliament. In Council, the file sits under the One Europe, One Market roadmap agreed in April 2026, with political agreement targeted for the end of 2027.

Article 80 excludes contracts awarded to controlled entities on the same three conditions as Article 12 of Directive 2014/24/EU: the buyer exercises control similar to that over its own departments, more than 80 % of the entity's activities are carried out for the controlling buyers, and there is no direct private capital participation beyond non-controlling, non-blocking forms required by national law. The 80 % share is measured on average turnover, or another verifiable activity indicator, over the three preceding years (Article 80(4)). Joint control is regulated in Article 80(3), public-public cooperation in Article 81 and utilities' affiliated undertakings in Article 83, which keeps the 80 % turnover test.

The clause that settles the summer's debate is Article 80(5): Member States may maintain or adopt stricter national provisions on the contracts excluded under the Article. The recitals add that Member States remain free to enshrine stricter rules or open these contracts to competition. In other words, the Regulation harmonises the ceiling of what counts as in-house across the EU, not the floor.

For bidders the practical point is that the in-house exemption keeps a substantial share of public spending out of competition, and the Regulation does not open it further. Where a Member State has tightened in-house rules, as Finland did in 2026, that opening survives on the face of the proposal, subject to national re-enactment once the directive base disappears.

The open, restricted, competitive negotiated, competitive dialogue and innovation partnership procedures give way to three. In the open procedure (Article 34) any operator submits a tender from the outset; the buyer decides whether to apply selection criteria and whether to negotiate. In the dynamic procedure (Article 36) operators join a system and are invited to tender or negotiate for individual opportunities during its validity, with or without selection criteria. The innovation procedure (Article 41) is for solutions the buyer wants developed, running from market consultation through testing and validation to purchase.

Negotiation becomes ordinary rather than exceptional, and where the buyer negotiates it must in principle include every suitable, non-excluded operator. Buyers must publish a procurement plan at the start of each budgetary period and announce market consultations (Article 30). Selection criteria are limited to what is necessary and proportionate: excessive turnover requirements are curtailed and unjustified demands for prior public-sector experience are restricted.

The dynamic procedure cuts both ways for suppliers. Once a system is in place, the individual competitions are visible only to members, so the moment to act is the system's launch notice, not the call-off. Monitoring shifts from tender notices to procurement plans, consultations and system launches.

Best price-quality ratio becomes the default with teeth: quality criteria must represent at least 30 % of total points, rising to 50 % for labour-intensive contracts. Price-only awards are permitted only where quality is secured through specifications or performance clauses. Award criteria may link to the subject matter directly or indirectly, opening the door to supply-chain considerations.

Framework agreements are capped at three years with a single operator and five with several, with no extra flexibility for utilities. Contract modifications lose the 50 % value ceiling, but modifications above 50 % of the initial value require a prior notice, and the de minimis exemption disappears.

Exclusion grounds are consolidated into twelve mandatory grounds, including corruption, fraud, environmental crime and breaches of EU restrictive measures, and mandatory grounds can no longer be cured by self-cleaning. A new discretionary ground targets operators that are insufficiently reliable from a security standpoint.

Politically the weightiest part of the proposal is European preference. Operators, goods, services and works are classified as covered or non-covered depending on whether their origin falls under the WTO Government Procurement Agreement or an EU trade agreement (Article 70). Buyers may restrict participation of non-covered operators and may impose European preference requirements (Article 73), such as a minimum share of EU-origin goods, or reject tenders whose content is less than half covered. A Commission online tool would determine coverage.

This is a toolbox, not a Buy European mandate: using it is the buyer's choice, and mandatory preference arises only where sectoral EU legislation says so, with the Regulation as the horizontal framework. Buyers may, and in some contexts must, assess security risks stemming from a bidder's ownership, financing or exposure to third-country laws.

For EU-based bidders the preference is an advantage that has to be evidenced. Collecting origin data on components and subcontractors now is cheap insurance.

The largest new block is digital. An electronic eligibility service (Article 133) implements the once-only principle: an operator verifies its exclusion and selection data once and shares an eligibility profile with buyers, in practice replacing repeated ESPD submissions. Each Member State must set up a National Public Procurement Data Space (Article 134) receiving notices, procurement documents and contract data down to individual payments, interconnected with an EU-level data space.

The Commission would build an open-source eProcurement platform that buyers may use and that a Member State may make mandatory with twelve months' notice. Notices travel through the national data space to the Publications Office, which continues to publish them on TED.

For suppliers the volume and spread of things to watch grows: procurement plans, market consultations, dynamic system launches and tenders across several platforms. Manual monitoring does not scale, which is why AI-based monitoring that reads notices and matches them to a company becomes table stakes.

Because a Regulation applies directly, the question in every capital is what survives. On the face of the proposal Member States keep: stricter in-house rules (Article 80(5)); the power to oblige buyers to divide contracts into lots (Article 100(7)); everything below the EU thresholds; and the review and remedies system, since the Remedies Directives are untouched. National procedural add-ons without such a reservation will depend on the negotiations.

Thresholds are unchanged. Article 2 restates the values in force since 1 January 2026, and Article 3 keeps the biennial GPA-based revision, now with the Commission empowered to amend by delegated act.

Finland is a useful test case because it reformed its Public Procurement Act (1397/2016) three months before the proposal. The amendments entered into force on 18 June 2026: a duty to divide contracts into lots and a single-tender rule requiring a re-run of an above-threshold open procedure that attracts only one bid apply from 1 October 2026, and a 10 % minimum direct ownership requirement for company-form in-house entities applies from 1 July 2027. Finland's in-house sales cap is already 5 % and EUR 500 000, far tighter than the EU's 20 %.

In August 2026, working from the leaked draft, Finnish public-sector service companies and several media outlets reported that the Regulation would abolish the 10 % rule and unwind the reform. The official text's Article 80(5) points the other way, and the Association of Finnish Municipalities described the in-house definition as largely mirroring the directive while noting that the national provisions will have to be re-enacted once the directive base is repealed. The lots duty is covered by Article 100(7); the single-tender rule has no equivalent reservation and is an open question.

The Finnish-language version of this guide, written for Finnish bidders, goes through the national provisions section by section.

Application is years away, but the direction is set and several changes reward early movers:

1. Keep national timelines straight. National reforms already in force, such as Finland's lots duty and single-tender rule from 1 October 2026, open competitions regardless of Brussels.

2. Build a single, current eligibility file. The electronic eligibility service will run on the same data as the ESPD: registrations, taxes and social contributions, references, staff qualifications.

3. Document origin and supply chain. European preference and security clauses reward suppliers who can prove where components and subcontractors come from.

4. Prepare to negotiate. With negotiation available in both main procedures, tenders must survive discussion: pricing structure, options and exclusions justified.

5. Invest in quality narratives and metrics, since at least 30 % of points come from quality.

6. Monitor procurement plans, market consultations and dynamic systems, not just tender notices. Late joiners see nothing. Automate the monitoring.

This section is updated at each milestone of procedure 2026/0265 (COD). Last update: 20 September 2026.

Commission: proposal adopted 9 September 2026 with impact assessment SWD(2026) 590–592 and external studies published on the Public Buyers Community.

European Parliament: awaiting committee referral; no rapporteur named.

Council: file under the One Europe, One Market roadmap; working-party examination starting autumn 2026.

Finland: Government to submit a U-communication to Parliament setting the national negotiating position; in-house rules expected to be the key issue.

Application: entry into force 20 days after Official Journal publication; applies two years after entry into force (Article 149); review every seven years (Article 148).