One Regulation, one market? The future of EU public procurement

Session overview

The European Commission has formally proposed a new Public Procurement Regulation, a potentially fundamental change to how public procurement works across the EU.

Most significantly, the proposal would replace the existing procurement Directives with a single, directly applicable Regulation. Could this create a more genuinely European procurement system, with greater consistency between Member States? The scale of the proposed change is substantial, representing a significant departure from the existing legislative framework.

The reform also puts procurement data and digitalisation centre stage, proposing interconnected national procurement data spaces, common EU data standards and a more integrated digital procurement marketplace.

Alongside this, the proposal strengthens the role of procurement in delivering social, environmental and innovation objectives, while introducing changes relating to security, resilience and European preference.

This session will explore what these reforms could mean in practice. Will a Regulation deliver greater consistency? Could better EU-wide data transform transparency and accountability? And what do the changes mean for socially responsible procurement, governance, oversight and remedies?

Our panellists are:

• Anne Davies (Chair), Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of Oxford
• Abby Semple, Principal Consultant, Public Procurement Analysis
• Ezgi Uysal, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Copenhagen
• Karolis Granickas, Head of Europe and Central Asia, Open Contracting Partnership
• Kirsi-Maria Magga, Professor of Law, University of Lapland
• Roberto Caranta, Professor of Administrative Law, University of Turin
• Willem A. Janssen, Professor of Public Procurement Law, University of Groningen and Utrecht University

This online session is co-hosted by the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Law and the Government Outcomes Lab (GO Lab) in the Blavatnik School of Government.