GW Law Webinar: EU Procurement Reforms — An International Perspective

October 5, 2026 – 9:00 Eastern US – 15:00 CET

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Join George Washington University Law School (GW Law) and the University of Turin for a free one-hour webinar on the EU’s most important procurement reforms in over a decade.

Nearly 800 Webinar Registrants from 85+ Countries

On September 9, 2026 the European Commission published proposed — and sweeping — changes to the rules that govern EU procurement. (Proposed regulation.) These massive reforms (the first since 2014) will likely reach across the European continent and beyond, to affect the EU Member States, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) states and many of the nations that have trade and association agreements affecting procurement in place with the European Union (including the WTO Government Procurement Agreement).

Global perspectives on the EU legislation: The EU reforms cover key areas of modern procurement — competitive methods, data transfers and strategic autonomy — which will be addressed by the webinar’s international panel. A transnational approach helps to explain the EU’s proposed regulation because it apparently borrows from other systems. For example, Article 30 of the proposed regulation, which encourages market consultations by a procuring agency, looks strikingly similar to the United States’ Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 15.201. (The citation may change in the coming months because of the Trump administration’s “overhaul” of the FAR.) The EU’s regulation’s proposed “open” procedure (Articles 34-25) is very similar to competitive negotiations under the FAR’s Part Subpart 15.3, and the regulation’s “dynamic” procedures (Articles 36-38) are analogous to “dynamic” procedures under Articles 34-39 of the UK Procurement Act.

International Panelists

Gian Luigi Albano (CONSIP / Agencia del Demanio)
Roberto Caranta
Roberto Caranta (U. of Turin)
Isabel da Rosa (European Stakeholders Expert Group)
Gabriella Racca (Co-Moderator – U. of Turin)
Marc Christopher Schmidt (European Commission)
Tünde Tátrai (Corvinus U.)
Pedro Telles
Pedro Telles (Copenhagen Business School)
Marko Turudić (U. of Zagreb)
Christopher Yukins (Co-Moderator; GW Law)

Introduction: Directive or Regulation?

Pedro Telles

Pedro Telles (Copenhagen Business School) will open our discussion with perhaps the most surprising aspect of the new EU procurement legislation: the form (regulation versus directive) it will take. In the early summer of 2026, after many years of preparation by the European Commission, a document leaked which indicated that instead of issuing procurement directives as it had in 2014 and earlier, the European Union would address procurement reform through a regulation, the new “Public Procurement Act.” (See report by Professor Telles.) The new act would replace the 2014 EU procurement directives (which merely frame what Member States must transpose into their national procurement laws) with a single new regulation, binding throughout the European Union. The approach is controversial: in an April 2026 joint submission, a majority of the EU Member States, joined by Norway, argued forcefully that the EU should leave more control with its Member States by continuing to rely on directives rather than a regulation (see analysis by Professor Telles).

Topic 1: Competitive Methods

To foster emerging technologies — and encourage more flexible buying — the new EU procurement legislation is to launch a new competitive method, an expanded “open procedure.” Gian Luigi Albano (Consip S.p.A. and Agenzia del Demanio (Italy)) will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the EU’s new approaches to competition, and how they can facilitate procurement for innovation.

Resources

  • Gian Luigi Albano, The Open-Negotiated Procedure and the Limits of the Flexibility Narrative – A First Reading of the European Commission’s Leaked Public Procurement Regulation, with Italy as the Empirical Test Case — From the abstract: This note examines the European Commission’s leaked draft Public Procurement Regulation of July 2026, and asks whether the diagnosis behind its central innovation, the open-negotiated procedure, survives contact with the evidence usually invoked for it. We argue that the rigidity narrative driving the reform conflates two different statistics, procedures counted and procedures valued, and that Italian data for 2025 show these pointing in opposite directions so that the reform is sized for the smaller of the two problems. We then read the open-negotiated procedure against its closest American analogue, negotiated award under Part 15 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation, and find not a shared logic but two different ways of disciplining discretion, one built ex ante into the structure of the procedure and the other left to ex post review, with the European draft borrowing the flexibility of the second before it has built the apparatus that makes that flexibility safe. Evidence from the European Court of Auditors on a decade of buyer behaviour under the current, already permissive regime suggests the constraint on quality-weighted awarding has been behavioural rather than legal, a constraint the draft’s central instrument does not address and may worsen. Game-theoretic considerations bearing on the internal design of multi-stage negotiation are set out separately as a preliminary sketch for a paper this series will devote to the subject. (Archive copy)

Topic 2: Digital Exchanges

Marc Christopher Schmidt (European Commission) will discuss the European Union’s plan for a common data space that will — among other things — make it far easier to address contractor qualifications, and so to exclude bad contractors.

Isabel da Rosa

Isabel da Rosa (European Stakeholders Expert Group on Public Procurement), the co-author (with Prof. Tünde Tátrai) of an important expert report on procurement data published by the Commission (see below), will discuss how the draft regulation responds to the report’s findings of “major weaknesses . . . in data quality, lifecycle completeness, interoperability and accountability in the EU Member States, which limit “the usefulness of the data for transparency, monitoring and evidence-based policymaking.”

Resources

  • G.M. Racca, Digitalisation and Competition. Proposal for upcoming public procurement reform, in W. Janssen, F. Lichère, K.M. Magga (eds.), Reforming EU Public Procurement Proposals for the Reform of Directive 2014/24/EU, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK · Northampton, MA, USA, 2026, 118-133
    Abstract: This contribution proposes disruptive reforms to EU public procurement rules aimed at providing deep digital transformation of the public procurement cycle, from award to contract execution, involving digital, interoperable platforms and AI-assisted systems, as well as the integration of Virtual Company Dossiers and the  forthcoming European Business Wallet to provide an evolved real time evaluation of suppliers that wish to access the procurement market. Such digital evolution would facilitate participation also of SMEs taking into account also the competition in the award and the coherence and competition safeguards also during the execution phase, ensuring transparency and accountability and aligning promised and delivered outcomes of procurement in pursuit of the final goal of public interest. The evolution towards collaborative procurement platforms might foster innovation and social goals, modernise public procurement processes, reinforce ‘digital trust’, and achieve a fairer and more effective public spending. These innovations, linked to a possible harmonised 28th legal regime for EU innovative suppliers, might provide access to a joint procurement platform for innovation that would reduce existing inefficiencies and promote cross-border participation. 
  • Karolis Granickas, Open Contracting Partnership, A digital backbone for EU’s procurement vision: Our take on the current regulation draft (3 Aug 2026) (“Europe does not often get the chance to rewrite its procurement rulebook from first principles. We . . . believe this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally reform how procurement is run across the EU, to move it from a paper-based, compliance-driven chore to an intelligent, user-friendly digital service that boosts European innovation and economic inclusion.”).
  • Pedro Telles, Correcting the Lost Decade of Electronic Public Procurement in the EU, In: ERA Forum. 26, 3, p. 509-525 (2025) (Abstract: This paper critiques the EU’s electronic public procurement framework under Directive 2014/24/EU for failing to deliver on its transformative promise. The Directive digitised legacy procedures, resulting in continued reliance on notices and insufficient data capture, and created an asymmetric evolution for initiatives such as eForms and the Public Procurement Data Space. To address these deficiencies in the forthcoming revision of the procurement Directives, the paper advocates for the correction of the legal limitations and the creation of a digital-first procurement system fully integrated with the broader public administration of the Member States.).
  • Pedro Telles, Looking Into the Public Procurement Data Space and eForms, 33 Public Procurement Law Review 14 (2024) (Abstract: This article explores the Public Procurement Data Space (PPDS) and eForms, two recent development designed to improve data collection in public procurement in the EU. It shows that both the PPDS and eForms, as currently designed and implemented, improve to an extent data completeness and quality. Nonetheless, such improvements will be limited and not enough to enable a data-driven policy for public procurement as anticipated by the Commission. This is essentially due to the limitations imposed by the existing procurement regulatory architecture as well as a misalignment of incentives between what the Commission wishes to achieve and what work the Member States and contracting authorities will have to undertake.).
GW Law Webinar Series 2025: Open Contracting Around the Globe
Procurement Without Borders: Exchanging Contractor Qualification Information Internationally

United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime, Open Contracting in ASEAN Member States: Legal and Regulatory Review (2026). Abstract: This report assesses the legal and regulatory foundations for open contracting in the eleven Member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It examines how procurement frameworks, e-procurement initiatives and anti-corruption mechanisms can be adapted for open contracting, and how the ASEAN Member States can strengthen their systems to advance integrity in public spending and reinforce public trust.

Abby Daniell, Itziar Barbon, and Syrine Souissi, European Commission transforms public procurement across Europe with AWS and NTT Data (Amazon Web Services (AWS), Nov. 2024) (discussing EU’s efforts to integrate Member States’ procurement data through a shared European public procurement data space).

Topic 3: Strategic Autonomy

The European Union and its partners have found it increasingly difficult to secure supply chains in a global, often hostile economy. Marko Turudic (University of Zagreb) and Roberto Caranta (University of Turin) will discuss the EU’s approaches to strategic autonomy in international trade and procurement. The focus will be on Chapter 5 of the proposed regulation, which addresses a new “European Preference.”

Under that EU preference, public buyers in the Member States will be allowed to impose preferences (such as price preferences) for EU-based vendors, goods and services. Further, the European Commission will have the authority to remove trade protections from vendors from specific nations — including nations that are members of the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (see map below) — if, for example, those nations fail to afford appropriate access to their own public procurement markets.

GPA Members and Observers. Source: World Trade Organization

Resources

  • Roberto Caranta, Local content and local value in EU public procurement procedures, Közbeszerzési Jog (Public Procurement Law) 2026/3 – Tanulmány, DOI: 10.55413/193.A2600301.KOJ (in English and Hungarian). Abstract: Pursuing local content or local value is against EU public procurement law. However, EU law already accommodates some possibilities to legitimately engage in sound procurement practices and/or pursue wider societal interests that may incidentally be beneficial to local economies, thus enhancing local value. Those possibilities should be expanded in the forthcoming reform without agonising about otherwise elusive cross-border procurement. Nor should concerns about corruption and other abusive practices deter from sound and legitimate buying practices, sclerotising award procedures across the EU.
  • Roberto Caranta, Of many sticks and a mutant carrot: the new external dimension of EU public contracts, in W. Janssen, F. Lichère and K-M. Magga (eds.), Reforming EU Public Procurement. Proposals for the Reform of Directive 2014/24/EU (Cheltenham, Elgar Publishing, 2026) 150-168. Abstract: In a changing global trade law context, the EU is increasingly using public contracts to ensure reciprocal market access with third countries and to fight against unfair competitive practices of those same countries. In this context, the recent case law of the CJEU has left to each contracting authority or entity to decide on whether economic operators from third country not having a reciprocal market opening agreement with the EU (non-covered economic operators) may be allowed or not to participate in their public procurement procedures and in case to devise “adjustments” consequent to that participation. This is hardly workable, and in the context of the forthcoming reform EU rules should be adopted to better guide those contracting authority and entities in dealing with third countries economic operators.
  • Marko Turudić, Is there a Place for Local Content Requirements in EU Public Procurement? (23 Dec. 2025). Abstract: Local content requirements (LCRs) represent the practice of prioritising domestic economic inputs within the national market. In the context of public procurement, this approach is typically observed when preference is given to local resources and economic operators during the evaluation and scoring of tenders, or even when only local economic operators are allowed to participate in the public procurement procedure. This Chapter examines the potential for incorporating LCR provisions within EU public procurement procedures. The analysis is divided into two main perspectives. Firstly, it considers the concept of LCRs and the feasibility of implementing such provisions from the standpoint of individual Member States. Secondly, it explores the issue at the broader EU level, evaluating the compatibility and implications of LCRs within the framework of European Union regulations and policies.
  • Marko Turudić, Exclusive Competence Without Comprehensive Legislation: The Constitutional Deficit in the Treatment of Third-Country Economic Operators in EU Public Procurement (7 July 2026). Abstract: The Court of Justice for the European Union confirmed in Kolin (C-652/22) and Qingdao (C-266/22) that third-country economic operator access to EU public procurement falls within the EU’s exclusive competence under the common commercial policy, while establishing problematic transitional rules. Yet the EU has not exercised this competence comprehensively. This paper argues that the result is a constitutional deficit. Drawing on pre-emption under Article 2(1) TFEU, the effectiveness of the common commercial policy, sincere cooperation under Article 4(3) TEU, and the right to effective judicial protection under Article 47 CFREU — the paper demonstrates that this deficit is incompatible with the constitutional principles that justify the conferral of exclusive competence. It proposes a four-element legislative framework: transparent admission discretion, mandatory score adjustments within a legislated range, removal of the undefined ‘differential treatment arrangements’ that paragraph 64 of Kolin establishes, and full public procurement remedies for admitted third-country operators as required by Article 47 CFREU.
  • Joint EIC-EuDA-FIEC-UNIFE [industry groups] statement on the Public Procurement Act (Sept. 2, 2026) – Anticipating release of the Act, industry groups called upon the European legislators to consolidate regulatory defenses for European industry against unfair foreign competition in EU public procurement markets.
  • Christopher Yukins & Allen Green, International Trade Agreements and U.S. Procurement Law, Chapter 9 to The Contractor’s Guide to International Procurement (American Bar Association 2018) (Erin Loraine Felix & Marques Peterson, eds.).
Marko Turudić

Professor Marko Turudić explained why he has launched his forthcoming book with Edward Elgar Publishing, “Strategic Autonomy and Public Procurement – Using Public Procurement to Achieve Economic, Industrial, Digital and Defense Autonomy”:

Geopolitical realities have shifted significantly over the last five years. Some of the things governments worldwide once took for granted – like the steady march towards free and fair global markets – have been all but abandoned. International trade continues to be weaponized to coerce governments and organizations into political concessions.

Against this changing backdrop, the EU has started to push back by using its vast market as a tool to achieve autonomy. In the past few years, we have witnessed a steady stream of new legislative and policy acts aimed at instrumentalizing the internal market: the Anti-Coercion Instrument, the draft Industrial Accelerator Act, the ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030, the SAFE instrument, and the Tech Sovereignty Package. One of the most important tools these acts attempt to leverage is public procurement.

As a result, EU public procurement is being given another layer of complexity, another set of goals to achieve – and the aim of this book is to establish whether this can be done effectively. . . .

This book is a direct continuation of my previous work on third-country economic operator access to the EU public procurement market. One of the organizing themes of that book was “reciprocity” in international trade as it applies to public procurement, but a series of related concerns ran alongside it: protectionism, the safeguarding of the EU’s industrial base, and the pursuit of a genuine level “playing field” by neutralizing the advantage enjoyed by heavily and nationally subsidized economic operators, among many others. As I was completing that book, these themes ceased to be peripheral. In parallel, they became more and more relevant as the geopolitical landscape began to shift, especially from 2024 onwards. This book follows them to the center of EU economic policy, where they now sit.

Additional Research Resources

Proposed Regulation

Commission Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on public contracts and concessions, COM (2026) 590 final (9 Sept. 2026) (repealing Directives 2014/23/EU, 2014/24/EU and 2014/25/EU, and amending Regulations (EC) No 1370/2007, (EU) 2023/1542, (EU) 2024/1157, (EU) 2024/1252, (EU) 2024/1735, (EU) 2024/1781, (EU) 2024/2847, (EU) 2024/3110 and (EU) 2025/40, and Directives 2008/98/EC, (EU) 2019/882, (EU) 2022/2381, (EU) 2023/1791 and (EU) 2024/1760) (Public Procurement Act)

Expert reports

The European Commission drew on a number of studies from experts in drafting the proposed regulation, including:

  • Altaee, BIM and public procurement state of play, impacts and policy recommendations for the revision of the public procurement directives, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/6739163
  • da Rosa, I. and Tátrai, T., Public procurement data – Data governance, TED, PPDS, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/8946570
  • Janssen, W. A. and Caranta, R., Expert opinion on the incoherence of EU public procurement regulation – Legal and non-legal solutions from the public buyer perspective, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/5996433
  • Lazo Vitoria, X., Concession contracts, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/5306454
  • PricewaterhouseCoopers, Uptake of green public procurement – Study on the uptake of green public procurement, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/2442915
  • PricewaterhouseCoopers, Loozen, N., Schoonjans, L., Dudás, Z. et al., Assessment of policy options on digital procurement – Analysis of costs and benefits, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/4904146
  • Science and Innovation Link Office S.L. (SILO), COTEC Foundation, Salazar-Elena, J. C., Zabala-Iturriagagoitia,  et al., SME participation in EU public procurement – Evidence from TED (2018–2023) – Final report, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/6102009
  • Sundstrand, A., Green, social and labour considerations in EU public procurement – A study on sustainable conditions, requirements and criteria in the EU public procurement acquis, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/9631962
  • Viegand Maagøe, Alfieri, F., Donatello, S. and de Souza, M., Use of labels in public procurement procedures – Study to support to the impact assessment for the revision of the EU public procurement directives, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/7023902
  • Wainikka, C. and Hausel Heldahl, E., Intellectual property in public procurement – Country comparisons and impact on companies, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2873/9179309

Scholarly Commentary

Albert Sanchez-Graells, The Commission’s Proposal for a Public Procurement Act: A ‘Break the Mould’ Approach to EU Procurement Reform That Won’t Do, EU Law Live — Weekend Edition (Sept. 19, 2026). Professor Sanchez-Graells argues that the “single most radical and probably controversial aspect of the proposal is its legal form and expected prescriptiveness.” He notes that, while “it is true that the proliferation of procurement-related requirements and rules across a multiplicity of EU instruments creates significant complexity and inconsistency, . . . the scattering of those requirements across legal instruments is only one part of the complexity and related legal uncertainty. In many cases, public buyers will struggle to interpret and apply the relevant requirements even if they are all contained in the Public Procurement Act—which they will not (at least in the mid- to long-run) as consolidating the current requirements does not eliminate the risk of proliferation of procurement-related rules across legislative files.” He emphasizes: “[T]he adoption of a regulation will not and cannot prevent legal variation across Member States even in relation to activities covered by the regulation because of the peculiarities of public procurement regulation and practice.”

Marko Turudić and Pedro Telles: Two of our program panelists are conducting an online discussion on key issues under the Public Procurement Act. Pedro Telles’ commentary; Marko Turudić’s commentary is available here. Individual posts are below.

European preference

Choice of legislative instrument

The EU Public Procurement Regulation: A U.S. Perspective

Institutional Reports

European Court of Auditors

European Court of Auditors, Special report 28/2023: Public procurement in the EU – Less competition for contracts awarded for works, goods and services in the 10 years up to 2021 (published Apr. 2023) (“We found that over the last decade, competition for public contracts has decreased, and that the 2014 reform of the EU directives has not shown signs of reversing it. Overall, there is a lack of awareness for competition in public procurement. Data available is not used systematically to identify root causes for the decrease and only scattered actions are taken to reduce obstacles. We conclude that key goals of the EU’s 2014 reform to ensure competition, such as simplifying and shortening the procurement procedures, have not been met and that some of the objectives may even reduce competition. We recommend [the EU Commission clarify and prioritise public procurement objectives, close the gaps in the public procurement data collected, improve its monitoring tools to allow better analysis, deepen the root cause analysis and put forward an action plan to overcome key obstacle​s to competition in public procurement. . . . We also note that some of the objectives of the 2014 reform may at times go against the overarching objective of ensuring competition in public procurement.”).

World Bank, European Union: Competition in Public Procurement — Study on Competition in the European Union’s Public Procurement Markets (2018-2023). This 2025 report was prepared by the World Bank at the request of the European Commission. It “evaluates whether the EU’s Directives for procurement have succeeded in opening markets to competition,” in support of the planned revision of the 2014 EU Directives. From the introduction: “The study finds that while EU procurement markets demonstrate strong adherence to competitive procedures and a healthy influx of new entrants, significant disparities and structural barriers persist across countries and sectors. Targeted reforms are essential to ensure a more inclusive, transparent, and competitive procurement landscape. These include upgrading data systems, enhancing institutional capacity, and tailoring strategies to local market dynamics. Sustained investment in procurement professionalism and evidence-based policymaking will be critical to realizing the full potential of public procurement as a strategic lever for economic and social development across the EU.”