European preference in public procurement: bids below 50% can be rejected

MONDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2026

Il Public Procurement Act sostituisce tre direttive con un regolamento unico e apre alla preferenza europea. Ma «europeo» non coincide con l’origine doganale.

European preference in public procurement stops being a principle and becomes a written rule: the Commission proposes to let contracting authorities reject bids in which less than half the value comes from the Union or from countries with which an agreement exists.

European preference in public procurement: what the Commission proposes

On 9 September the Commission presented the Public Procurement Act, a proposed regulation replacing with a single text the three directives that have governed European procurement since 2014: the general one, the one on utilities and the one on concessions.

The change of instrument is not a technical detail. A directive must be transposed by each member state, which in transposing it adds and interprets; a regulation applies directly and identically everywhere. For anyone bidding in several European countries, it is the difference between twenty-seven national rulebooks and one.

Inside the proposal is the part that matters most to importers: the possibility of introducing European preference criteria in tender procedures.

The figures in the proposal

• Directives replaced by a single regulation: three, in force since 2014
• Pages of rules: from around nine hundred to around two hundred
• Tender procedures provided for: three, instead of the current five
• Estimated annual administrative savings: 649 million euro, of which 570 for businesses and 80 for contracting authorities
• Minimum share of European content below which a bid may be rejected: 50% of the bid value

The market at stake is large: according to the Commission, European public procurement is worth around 2,500 billion euro, roughly 15% of the Union's gross domestic product.

The 50% threshold and what "European content" means

The options available to contracting authorities are three, of increasing force: requiring a minimum level of European content, giving an advantage at the award stage to bids with more of it, and in defined cases rejecting bids in which European goods, services or works are worth less than 50% of the total.

Here a clarification matters more than the threshold itself. "European", in this context, does not coincide with the customs origin of the goods and is not a synonym for "made in the Union": the proposal speaks of «covered» goods, services and works, that is originating in the Union or in countries that have a reciprocal procurement agreement with it. These are two different perimeters, and confusing them leads to wrong conclusions about which supplies qualify. The Commission plans an online tool to establish who and what falls within coverage.

It should be said just as plainly that how the share is to be verified across a complex supply chain is not yet defined. It is the point practitioners raise first: setting a threshold is simple, demonstrating which side of it a product assembled from components of six countries sits on is much less so.

What to check now if you supply the public sector

First of all, the calendar. This is a proposal, not a rule in force: it must pass through the European Parliament and the Council, a route that for texts of this scope takes up to two years. Application before 2028 is unlikely. Nobody needs to redo their supply chain today.

That said, three checks make sense now, because they take time and cost nothing.

The first concerns the composition of what you sell. If you supply public buyers directly or indirectly, knowing what share of the value of your products is European or covered is information almost nobody holds in usable form today, and which is only useful if gathered before the tender.

The second concerns your non-EU suppliers. It is worth asking now whether their country has a procurement agreement with the Union: the answer changes the perimeter, and changing it later, mid-course, means changing supplier.

The third concerns documentation. Whatever the final form of the verification, it will rest on origin documents and production records: those who have already collected them for every code start ahead, those who must request them once a tender is open arrive late.

With La Merce, preparing for European preference in public procurement means knowing from now what share of the value of each supply is European or covered by an agreement, before the 50% threshold becomes the criterion by which a bid is admitted or rejected.

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