The Commission has tabled its proposal for a single EU procurement regulation. What changes — three procedures, 30% quality, and when the rules actually apply.
On 9 September the European Commission presented its proposal for a new procurement regulation, COM(2026) 590. The main points have since been covered almost everywhere: three directives become one directly applicable rulebook, quality gets a minimum weighting, and European preference is written in.
Go into the text itself and five things emerge that the first week of coverage did not catch. Several of them matter more in practice than the headlines. Five of the speakers and lecturers Nohrcon works with have read the proposal, and their observations run through what follows.
Remedies Directives 89/665/EEC and 92/13/EEC remain untouched, under Article 35(2) of the proposal. Substantive procurement law is consolidated into one regulation — enforcement is not.
Edgaras Markevičius, PhD and procurement specialist at Sorainen, who speaks at the Nordic Public Procurement Forum, reads it the same way: the new regulation will operate alongside the current remedies system.
National review bodies, time limits and sanctions therefore continue to rest on national rules that differ from country to country, while the rules to be enforced become uniform. How a directly applicable rulebook is to be enforced through twenty-five different review systems is a question the proposal leaves open.
For buyers and bidders this may be the most practically relevant finding in the whole text: the route to challenge a decision does not change — yet.
Under Article 98(4), quality criteria must account for at least 30% of the scoring points — 50% for labour-intensive contracts, defined as contracts where labour costs exceed half the contract value.
But Article 98(5) preserves the option to award on price alone where quality is secured through the technical specifications. The choice simply has to be justified separately.
Several summaries have reported that lowest price disappears. It does not. It becomes a choice that must be explained — a different and considerably more manageable change.
Articles 80-84 bring the in-house rules into the regulation. Article 80(5) provides:
“Member States may maintain or adopt stricter national provisions on the contracts excluded pursuant to this Article.”
Professor Kirsi-Maria Magga of the University of Lapland, who opens the Nordic Public Procurement Forum in November, was among the first to point to the provision. She notes that it was not in the draft leaked over the summer, and that the consequence is that Finland does not have to dismantle its restrictions on in-house entities selling into the private market. Nor do Italy, Spain, Lithuania or Poland need to change their stricter in-house rules. Magga expects further concessions of this kind to Member States during the negotiations.
Divergence between Member States therefore survives in precisely the area where it matters most in practice. A supplier bidding into Finland or Poland still meets a different rulebook from the one at home.
Less noticed is Article 80(6): the exception falls away if the contract is subcontracted in full.
Articles 70-77 build a tiered framework under which authorities may restrict participation, impose origin requirements, apply price reductions or bonus points, and — under Article 73 — reject tenders with less than 50% EU content.
Markevičius describes it as a “Buy European” tilt short of full protectionism: contracting authorities would be allowed — not required — to exclude bids with less than 50% European content, restrict certain tenders to EU operators only, or favour EU companies in strategic sectors.
The distinction matters, and much of the coverage lost it. Note also that Articles 72 and 75 allow the Commission to restrict coverage or make preference mandatory by delegated act. The framework can therefore tighten after adoption without the regulation being reopened.
Markevičius also notes that the regulation covers all sectors except defence. Article 78 confirms it: defence contracts remain under Directive 2009/81/EC. Pure research and development services are excluded under Article 79.
Article 149 provides that the regulation applies two years after adoption.
The widespread disagreement about 2029 or 2030 is therefore not a disagreement about the regulation but about how long Parliament and Council take. Mikala Berg Dueholm, Partner and Attorney (L) at DLA Piper, reads the aim as concluding political negotiations by the end of 2027, with application from around 2030. Markevičius speaks of at least two years before entry into force, and sums it up this way: is it groundbreaking? Not yet, probably — we should expect changes in the legislative process.
The current rules will therefore govern your tenders for at least three more years, and the new framework builds on them.
Berg Dueholm sets out the Danish consequence, which applies in substance across the Member States: the three directives are repealed and replaced by a single regulation, and because a regulation applies directly in the Member States, the Danish Public Procurement Act cannot continue in its present form.
She also highlights that the new chapters on security and security of supply, together with the European preference rules, are to apply to contracts under the PSO Regulation as well — a point no other run-through has mentioned, and one that hits public transport directly.
Šarūnas Neniškis, attorney at Ellex in Lithuania, who speaks at the Nordic Public Procurement Forum on national security and supply chains, notices something other than the procedures:
“What surprised me most about the Commission’s proposal is the extent to which public procurement is being reoriented from a system primarily focused on effecting internal market and rigorous procedural matters to one that should serve as a tool for European economic security, industrial policy, and supply chain resilience.”
He notes that the Commission appears ready to move beyond the traditional logic of public procurement, where restrictions on suppliers from third countries require a specific legal or policy justification. The proposed approach to the origin of products, including possible “Made in EU” requirements, raises in his view a more fundamental question: how far can contracting authorities go in favouring European supply chains over potentially cheaper alternatives?
“It will be particularly interesting to see how the new security and resilience considerations will interact with the principles of equal treatment, proportionality and competition in individual procurement procedures.”
And he sets a test for when the reform can be called a success: whether it gives contracting authorities effective tools without creating new legal uncertainty for businesses.
Three main procedures replace the current system: an open procedure with a minimum 20-day deadline (Article 34), a dynamic procedure with continuous access (Articles 36-40) and an innovation procedure built around a problem statement (Articles 41-45). Negotiations are permitted throughout (Article 33). A special procedure covers crises and sole suppliers (Articles 46-48).
Professor Willem A. Janssen of Utrecht University, who opens the conference with Magga, highlights three movements in the reform:
“The EU is really choosing to put green, social and strategic centre stage in the procurement rules.”
“Buyers get more room to buy, but are also expected to be more transparent.”
“More room to cooperate amongst public authorities, more room to negotiate, meaning that the need for professional public procurement is more vital than ever.”
The second point rewards a second reading: flexibility and transparency pull against each other in practice. The more room an authority has to negotiate and choose, the more has to be documented afterwards.
At the Nordic Public Procurement Forum in Copenhagen, 17–20 November, Willem A. Janssen and Kirsi-Maria Magga open the conference with “Farewell to the directives — one regulation for European procurement”. Edgaras Markevičius speaks on procurement as a policy tool, and Šarūnas Neniškis on national security, third countries and supply chains.
See the programme for Nordic Public Procurement Forum 2026
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