Call for Evidence EU Public Procurement
The Chemnitz Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) represents the economic interests of more than 80,000 companies in the Chemnitz chamber district and acts as the central voice of a region. Public contracts are a key lever for growth, innovation and competitiveness for companies in the region, especially for SMEs and technology-oriented start-ups.
Against the backdrop of global challenges, geopolitical uncertainties and growing demands for environmental, social and digital responsibility, as well as the strategic importance of public investment, the modernisation of public procurement is of central importance. The EU initiative opens up the opportunity to make procurement procedures more efficient, transparent and strategically aligned in the long term, both at European and regional level.
Increasing efficiency through simplification and digitalisation
The existing procurement procedures at EU level are complex and administratively burdensome. This makes it particularly difficult for SMEs to access public contracts, limits innovation potential and hinders cross-border participation. Simplifying, flexibilising and digitising processes is therefore essential in order to make public investment more efficient and facilitate access for SMEs and start-ups.
We welcome a uniform EU legal framework that creates legal certainty, facilitates planning and reduces uncertainty. The establishment of a digital EU procurement marketplace with a central access point is particularly effective in increasing transparency, highlighting market opportunities and facilitating access for SMEs. Modern data and exchange platforms can support all phases of the procurement process – from tendering and evaluation to contract fulfilment – thereby promoting efficiency, comparability and quality control.
Strengthening European value creation through ‘Made in Europe’ criteria
The Chemnitz Chamber of Industry and Commerce expressly welcomes the greater consideration of ‘Made in Europe’ criteria in public procurement. Public contracts offer considerable potential for specifically strengthening European value creation, technological expertise and industrial capacities. In strategically relevant areas, appropriate criteria can make an important contribution to securing critical supply chains and reducing external dependencies.
A targeted design of ‘Made in Europe’ approaches can stimulate investment in European production and innovation capacities and help to ensure that know-how, research and development remain anchored in the EU in the long term. At the same time, this increases the resilience of the European economy to global crises and geopolitical risks. It is crucial that ‘Made in Europe’ criteria are clearly defined, transparent and legally certain. They must be compatible with the fundamental principles of competition, proportionality and openness of the single market. Overly rigid or undifferentiated application can entail risks, such as restrictions on competition, rising costs for public contracting authorities or additional bureaucratic burdens for businesses, especially SMEs. A balanced approach is therefore needed that supports strategic objectives without disproportionately restricting market access. From the business perspective, accompanying measures such as transitional arrangements, practical guidelines and close coordination with existing international commitments are essential.
It should be borne in mind that European companies are increasingly competing with suppliers from third countries whose market conditions are distorted by state subsidies, lower environmental and social standards or strategic industrial policies. A stronger ‘Made in Europe’ focus in public procurement law is therefore not a protectionist instrument, but a necessary compensation for structural competitive disadvantages and a legitimate means of ensuring fair competition in the single market.
Resilience Bonuses and Resilience Auctions as Strategic Market Instruments in Public Procurement
As part of the strategic modernisation of public procurement, the EU should introduce innovative, market-oriented mechanisms that go beyond traditional award criteria in order to systematically promote resilience in critical value chains. Resilience bonuses and resilience auctions are approaches that address precisely those areas where conventional procurement procedures reach their limits—namely safeguarding strategic supply routes, diversifying sources of supply, and reducing external dependencies in technology- and security-critical sectors.
The core idea behind these instruments is to reward resilience-related performance not primarily through regulatory constraints, but through supply-side incentives. A resilience bonus can be designed as a non-price award criterion that, at the expense of a purely low-price focus, rewards additional value creation, diversification, and European production shares without undermining competitive processes. This can be particularly useful where import dependencies on individual third countries, such as in the field of net-zero technologies, create structural risks that cannot be adequately addressed through price-driven procurement alone. Resilience auctions complement this logic with a directly market-based auction mechanism in which bidders offer not only a price but also concrete resilience contributions. These may include, for example, ensuring local production capacities, diversifying upstream suppliers, or guaranteeing short-term delivery capability. In such a model, bidders compete not exclusively on price, but also on the quality and strategic relevance of their offer for security of supply. An appropriate ranking mechanism can weight resilience contributions against purely price-based advantages, thereby creating market-based incentives for more robust supply chains. Such instruments are also relevant in the context of the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA). Their impact, as well as the intended cluster formation in the Net-Zero Acceleration Valleys designated across Europe, can be realised significantly more quickly. In this way, public procurement itself becomes a lever for market shaping, security of supply, and strategic autonomy, without resorting to protectionist measures. This is a pathway explicitly desired by many companies in the Net-Zero Acceleration Lausitz.
It is important, however, that resilience bonuses and resilience auctions do not lead to rigid market segmentation. They should be designed in a transparent, technology- and sector-specific manner and be closely aligned with existing EU legal frameworks (e.g. single market principles and WTO/GPA commitments). Pilot projects and evaluation phases, particularly in sectors with a high concentration of imports, can help identify practical design elements while preserving competitiveness, efficiency, and incentives for innovation.
Professionalisation of Contracting Authorities
The competence of contracting authorities is central to efficient, legally robust, and strategically oriented procurement processes. We therefore support continuous training programmes, the provision of digital tools and platforms, and the systematic evaluation of existing procedures. Professional contracting authorities ensure that innovation, SME participation, and the achievement of strategic objectives are implemented consistently.
Pilot projects for digital procurement management, at EU level or within individual Member States, can serve as best-practice examples and facilitate the transition towards standardised, efficient processes.
Policy Recommendations for EU and National Implementation
A coordinated European and national approach is essential to fully realise the strategic potential of this initiative. Both legislative and non-legislative measures should be clearly defined to strengthen efficiency, transparency, competition, and innovation. SMEs, start-ups, research institutions, and industry partners must be actively involved. Harmonised standards at EU and national level, along with continuous monitoring, are necessary to measure impacts and enable ongoing improvement.