Simplification - sure but for whom?

I'm making my way through the Commission's recent report on public procurement and one of the things that caught my attention was the discussion on simplification. As the report rightly mentions, simplification was one of the objectives of the 2014 procurement reform. The problem is that simplification is a loaded term and not an easy to define concept.

In the context of public procurement, simplification means different things for different stakeholders and more often than not these different views on simplification are at odds with one another.

For example, for the public sector the complaint that the current crop of procedures has not delivered simplification can be explained with what they really want underneath the claim for simplification. For contracting authorities what they want is discretion. Simplification for them means doing what they want, when they want without having to operate in a specific way just because the rules force them to do so. It is fair to say that this enhanced discretion only works if it is associated with legal certainty, ie without an increase in the likelihood of legal challenges by tenderers. Otherwise it is not really simplifying much. That does not mean, however, that when liberated from the shackles of complex rules contracting authorities embrace the opportunity to actually simplify their behaviours. Just look at England and Wales and see how little appetite there seems to be for the single competitive tendering procedure introduced in the Procurement Act 2023. This is a 'build your own adventure' kind of procedure that contracting authorities can customise to suit their needs. Stated preferences are one thing, revealed preferences another.

It is important to underline here that EU procurement rules do not exist to 'simplify' the life of contracting authorities. In fact their raison d'etre is the opposite: it is to constrain their behaviour to protect the market.

Thus, for economic operators, their call for simplification means something different. Standardisation of behaviour and procedures helps here, especially across markets. But what they really want is for contracting authorities to be less demanding on documentation and detail. It is in the hands of contracting authorities to embrace this simplification of the procurement process, and yet they do not seem keen in doing so.

In the 2026 Work Programme published on Tuesday, the Commission announced that the key objective for the procurement reform is simplification of the rules. Sure, but for whom?