Review of the European public procurement legal framework

EESC exploratory opinion at the request of the European Commission on the Review of the European public procurement legal framework

Key points

The EESC:

• agrees that a review of existing EU legislation is necessary to enhance simplification, reduce administrative cost, and support further harmonisation in the single market;
• believes that a sustainable EU procurement policy can go beyond the narrow market failure paradigm, enabling strategic and public welfare-oriented procurement; enshrine social, innovation and environmental criteria as equal objectives; and ensure fair access to public procurement by private operators;
• considers that public contracts must be awarded on the most economically advantageous basis, while emphasising the importance of non-price criteria, e.g., quality, innovation, environmental, sustainability and social considerations, especially workers’ rights and collective agreements;
• calls for a holistic approach towards Services of General Interest (SGI) policies;
• is of the view that public contracts should not be awarded to companies that systematically infringe core workers’ rights or collective agreements that they are bound to;
• considers that, subject to appropriate legal criteria, and while ensuring minimum distortion to competition, the possibility to use in-house procurement for majority-controlled legal entities and direct award should be retained as part of the revision of the EU procurement directives;
• recommends introducing a legal obligation to evaluate the effects of the existing thresholds for public service contracts;
• thinks that public procurement can support a socially just, ecologically sustainable and economically resilient Europe, for the benefit of the common good;
• calls for mandatory price revision clauses to account for wage-related changes in collective agreements and/or labour legislation or inflation, and other relevant factors that affect the execution of a contract, such as energy costs.

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