The major employers’ associations of the building and infrastructure sector in Europe have united their voices regarding the future European Union Public Procurement Act.
Construction and infrastructures at the European level face a decisive regulatory turning point. On the occasion of the development of the future Public Procurement Act, the main European associations representing international contractors (EIC), the dredging sector (EuDA), building and civil engineering (FIEC), and the railway industry (UNIFE) have published a common position. In the document, the four entities underline their strategic role in the deployment of Trans-European Transport Networks, the resilience of industrial heritage, and affordable housing stock, while warning of the devastating impact of unfair competition in the Single Market.
According to the employers’ associations, the last decade has been marked by a massive penetration of operators from third countries that benefit from state subsidies and operate in Europe without offering equivalent access to their home markets. Although the adoption of recent tools, such as the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), the International Procurement Instrument (IPI), and key rulings from the EU Court of Justice (Kolin cases in 2024 and Qingdao in 2025), has established jurisprudential bases, the sector considers it essential to unify and shield these guarantees in the new legal text.
Towards a simplified framework with mandatory quality criteria
The position submitted to the European legislator maintains that the revision of public procurement must serve to simplify procedures and homogenize bidding criteria among Member States. The goal is to reduce legal uncertainty and close the regulatory loopholes currently exploited by certain actors to enter public tenders under unbalanced conditions.
Among the priority measures proposed by EIC, EuDA, FIEC, and UNIFE, the eradication of awards based solely on price stands out. The sectoral alliance demands establishing the Best Price-Quality Ratio as the default methodology in public purchases, imposing mandatory minimum weightings for qualitative criteria. Likewise, they advocate for the widespread application of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis throughout the entire life cycle of the asset.
The employers’ associations demand eradicating pure price awards and establishing the Best Price-Quality Ratio as a mandatory method in the EU.
European preference and protection of strategic infrastructures
The joint document emphasizes the need to incorporate the principle of European preference for products, services, and works in strategic sectors. The sector defends that the goods and services enabling the execution of critical infrastructures and decarbonization goals should not be provided by operators from third countries lacking Free Trade Agreements (FTA) in public procurement or that are not signatories to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA).
Along these lines, the associations request the European Commission the ability to make the exclusion of these uncovered operators mandatory, even citing national security and energy resilience reasons, through delegated acts. In this way, contracting authorities would have sufficient legal backing to evaluate bids under geopolitical and industrial sovereignty considerations.
The alliance asks to empower the Commission to veto companies from third countries without reciprocity agreements in key contracts.
Mirror effect and lessons learned from the Foreign Subsidies Regulation
Reciprocity or the “mirror effect” constitutes another of the manifesto’s pillars. The industry demands that the EU apply to foreign companies exactly the same treatment that their home countries grant to European companies when they attempt to bid outside EU borders.
Finally, the statement urges the effective integration of the lessons learned from the application of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR). The purpose is to guarantee rigorous, rapid scrutiny with total legal certainty over those entities that have received distorting state support, preventing them from distorting the public works market in Europe.
The new rule must apply the principle of reciprocity and tighten control over companies supported by state subsidies
