Inforegio - Public Procurement

Public procurement plays a key role in the implementation of those EU investments and is an essential element of the Single Market, representing no less than 14% of the EU's GDP. The European Commission supports national and regional authorities managing EU funds in strengthening their public procurement competencies, through numerous actions included in the Action Plan on Public Procurement: support to efficient and strategic procurement, administrative capacity building, as well as improving transparency and accountability.

Action Plan on Public Procurement

Adopted for the first time in 2013, the Commission's Action Plan on Public Procurement sets out and brings together a series of concrete actions to help Member States to improve the performance of both administrations and beneficiaries in applying public procurement for Cohesion policy investments.

In 2020, the 4th revision of the Action Plan on Public Procurement included a series of new initiatives with a view to improving public procurement practices, properly using the public procurement framework in an emergency situation, ensuring a level playing field and using a procurement as a strategic tool to pursue key policy objectives. Key actions of the plan include:

Support to strategic policy objectives in Cohesion policy programming 2021-2027:

Contribution to the European Green Deal by promoting strategic (green, social and innovative) procurement in Cohesion policy programmes for 2021-2027
Monitoring of the Horizontal Enabling Conditions for Public Procurement in all policy programmes for 2021-2027

Better access to information and guidance for practitioners:

Public procurement competence centre: One stop shop portal presenting all the tools and information to help public buyers get value for money and better policy outcomes for citizens
Guidance on the avoidance of the most common errors to support public officials across the EU to avoid the most frequent errors and adopt best practices - Press Release
Buying social — A guide on taking account of social considerations in public procurement providing practical guidance for public buyers in line with 2014 EU rules on PP, with concrete case studies and takeaways for each section
Guidance on using the public procurement framework in the emergency situation related to the COVID-19 crisis
Guidance on the application of the collusion related exclusion ground presenting how contracting authorities could exclude from award procedures tenderers that are suspected of having agreed to distort competition

Professionalisation, expert support and training

Recommendation on the professionalisation of public procurement
ProcurCompEU - the European competency framework for public procurement professionals
Training coursesfor Member State authorities managing Cohesion policy funding on public procurement directives, strategic procurement and contribution to green and digital recovery, tools to ensure level playing field and other topics.
Experience and good practice sharing through REGIO Peer 2 Peer and Communities of Practitioners
Support to Audit Authorities with annual overview of typology of public procurement errors reported by national audit authorities and errors detected by REGIO auditors
Ad-hoc expert support needed for MS in order deal with PP issues through a pool of experts for PP issues.

Pilot projects

Mainstreaming strategic public procurement to advance regional development : together with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): a pilot project to offer practical "hands-on" support to five contracting and/or managing authorities in the EU Member States for strategic procurement initiatives
Integrity Pacts: together with Transparency International and 15 different Civil Society Organisations, a pilot project to improve transparency and accountability in public procurement through civic monitoring of 18 pilot projects.

Improving knowledge and studies on public procurement

2020: Study on Making socially responsible procurement work - 71 good practice cases
2020: Study on Digital Transformation of Public Procurement, Collection of worldwide cases where emerging technologies are applied in Public procurement (such as AI & ML, Data Analytics, Blockchain, VR & AR, 3D printing, RPA, Robots and drones and IoT)
2019: Study and dashboard on Single bidding for Member State authorities managing Cohesion policy funding on public procurement directives, strategic procurement and contribution to green and digital recovery, tools to ensure level playing field and other topics.
2016: Stock-taking study on administrative capacity building in the field of public procurement with country-specific information and recommendations
2016: e-library of good practices in public procurement in the context of European Structural and Investment (ESI) Funds

Other initiatives supported by the Commission

Urban Agenda Partnership on Innovative and Responsible Public Procurement for the EU

The EU Urban Agenda Partnership on Innovative and Responsible Public Procurement is one of the original Partnerships established in 2017 following the Pact of Amsterdam. The Action Plan 2018 put forward a package of actions that can help cities to address the challenges they experience related to innovative and responsible public procurement: Building a procurement strategy; Circular procurement; Knowledge exchange; Innovation broker; Future funds; Legal toolbox; Measuring the impact of spend. An E-learning module complements the plan. The partnership continues with a new Action Plan 2022 include three new actions: a reflection board, support action to achieve the EU Green Deal, Digitalisation and Innovation (GDDI) goals by using public procurement as a strategic tool, support action enabling economic recovery through public procurement.

Capacity building for cohesion policy