One of the challenges of the revision of the European rules governing public procurement, expected in 2026, will concern the possible introduction of a preference for tenderers established in the European Union in the context of public contracts intended to promote strategic sectors, an introduction to which the European Commission is committed (see EUROPE 13582/1).
In the draft own-initiative report by Piotr Müller (ECR, Polish), which will be put to the vote by MEPs on Tuesday 9 September, the European Parliament’s Committee on the Internal Market (IMCO) remains cautious. IMCO limits itself to requesting that the European Commission conduct “an in-depth impact assessment, in the context of the upcoming review of the public procurement framework, on possible ways and implications of prioritising the ‘European preference’ principle in procurement related to strategic industries”. According to IMCO, the Commission should “carefully evaluate the potential cost implications, the risks of limiting access to cutting-edge technologies, and the effects on the quality of services and products, while maintaining consistency with the EU’s international legal commitments” and avoiding any “protectionism”.
In particular, says the committee, any implementation of a European preference will have to be “in line with the principles of legal certainty and obligations under the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA)”. This guarantees access to public contracts in the EU for companies from the twenty-two third countries that are party to the GPA.
Before the vote in plenary, several political groups want Parliament to make its position on the principle of European preference in public procurement more explicit.
According to the S&D group, the aim of the Commission’s impact assessment should be to “propose criteria to give priority to European goods and services for strategic sectors”, such as heavy industry, pharmaceuticals, ‘net zero’ technologies, artificial intelligence, food, energy and chemicals.
The Left group is calling for the GPA to be withdrawn from the WTO so that the EU is free to give “exclusive” preference to European companies in public procurement. According to this group, EU contracting authorities should be able to give preference to “tenders that include at least 65% added value generated on EU territory”, citing the same strategic sectors as the S&D group.
On the far right, the issue of preference in public procurement is also a rallying cry, to the point of being hijacked for nationalist ends... and therefore incompatible with EU rules.
The PfE group urges the Commission to propose measures to facilitate “local, national or European preference in public procurement procedures, for the benefit of a resilient European industrial base”. As for the ESN group, it states that European public procurers should “be able to apply regional and/or national preference criteria when awarding their public contracts”.
The Directive on procurement in special sectors (2014/17) allows a public authority to reject a tender if more than 50% of the value of the tender comes from products originating in a third country with which the EU has not concluded a public procurement agreement.
To see the draft ‘Müller’ report: https://aeur.eu/f/ibu (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)