EU’s public procurement overhaul aims to prioritise quality over price, reshaping construction bidding standards

A major overhaul of the European Union’s public procurement framework is set to reshape how public works are awarded, with industry figures saying it could effectively end the long-running dominance of the lowest bid and weaken the practical importance of construction class rankings.

The European Commission’s proposed Public Procurement Act, which has already been unveiled and is now out for consultation, is designed to simplify and modernise the way public contracts are ha...

ndled across the bloc. According to the Commission, the plan would replace the current patchwork of rules with a single regulation, bringing greater consistency across member states and reducing the scope for divergent national interpretations.

That change matters because one of the central criticisms of the existing system has been its fragmentation. Under the present model, the procurement directives leave room for different national transpositions, which can produce uneven outcomes across the EU. By moving to a regulation, the Commission is seeking to impose a more uniform framework that member states would have less freedom to adapt.

At the heart of the reform is a decisive shift away from awarding contracts mainly on price. The new system would make the Best Price-Quality Ratio, or BPQR, the standard method for assessing bids. Quality would have to account for at least 30% of the evaluation, with contracting authorities also expected to weigh factors such as environmental impact, social considerations, innovation, safety and resilience.

The Commission says the reform is intended not only to improve the quality of public spending, but also to accelerate investment in infrastructure and public services. It also proposes a single digital platform for public contracts across the EU, part of a wider effort to reduce bureaucracy and make procurement more transparent and accessible.

According to reporting by euro2day.gr, officials and industry representatives in Greece see the proposal as particularly significant for the domestic construction market. They argue that if the new model is adopted in its current form, it could diminish the role of contractors’ classification certificates and shift attention firmly towards the broader merits of each tender.

Speaking at the 9th Infrastructure and Transport Conference in Athens, Fótis Kouvoukliótis, president of P.E.S.E.D.E., described the proposal as a “monumental” one that would replace much of what the sector has become used to. Zacharías Athousákis, president of S.A.T.E., said the Commission had identified inconsistencies in how earlier directives were applied across member states, and argued that a regulation would create clearer and more comparable rules throughout the Union.

He also said the new approach would mean that the winner of a tender would no longer be the bidder offering the biggest discount, but the one whose offer best matched the criteria set by the contracting authority. Those criteria would include environmental and climate effects, as well as the operational characteristics of the project.

The Commission has framed the proposal as a simplification exercise as well as a policy shift. In its own materials, it says the reform would consolidate several existing rules into one, reduce the number of procedures and strengthen the role of digital procurement. A separate explanation circulated in Brussels estimates annual savings of around €650 million, split between public buyers and businesses.

Supporters of the reform say the move reflects a broader European effort to stop public procurement from being driven almost exclusively by cost. The European Economic and Social Committee has also argued that procurement should look beyond the cheapest offer and place more weight on quality, environmental sustainability and social inclusion.

Still, the change will not be without controversy. As Athousákis noted, the difficulty lies not only in writing fairer criteria, but in ensuring they are applied consistently in practice. If the Commission’s proposal is adopted, contracting authorities will have to define their quality benchmarks far more carefully than before, and bidders will need to adapt to a system in which price remains important, but no longer rules alone.

For Greece’s construction sector, that could mark the start of a new competitive era. What has long been a race to the bottom on price may soon be replaced by a far more complex contest over quality, environmental performance and the ability to deliver durable public value.

Source: Noah Wire Services