EU Public Procurement Directive: 26 Italian and European firms call for deeper carbon cuts

Brussels – Simplifying public procurement rules? Yes, but prioritising the reduction of carbon emissions. Twenty-six Italian and European companies, trade associations, and civil society organisations – representing over 11,500 businesses – have called on the European Commission to ensure that the forthcoming revision of the EU regulatory framework on public procurement incorporates and prioritises carbon emission reduction criteria in procurement decisions. The request was sent in a letter addressed to the European Commissioner for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy, Stéphane Séjourné, the European Commissioner for the Clean Transition, Teresa Ribera, the European Commissioner for the Environment, Wopke Hoekstra, the European Commissioner for the Economy, Valdis Dombrovskis, the Director-General of the Directorate-General for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), Kerstin Jorna, and the Italian Ambassador to the European Union, Vincenzo Celeste. Among the promoters of the initiative are the Italian climate think tank, ECCO, the organisation specialising in strategies, programmes and actions for sustainable development, Fondazione Ecosistemi, and the platform for collaboration and knowledge-sharing in Italy amongst businesses committed to climate neutrality, Co2alizione. Among the signatories is the cooperative movement’s association, Legacoop.

According to the signatories, public procurement plays a strategic role in the industrial transition, serving as a “concrete lever for shaping demand” and accounting for around 16 per cent of European GDP – almost 2,500 billion euros a year. Although public procurement has “the potential to send clear signals to the market, encouraging the adoption of more sustainable technologies and production processes,” the authors of the petition believe that its potential is being exploited “only partially.” The reason is that procurement continues to be based on criteria centred on price rather than sustainability, which is instead still applied on a “voluntary” and “inconsistent” basis, varying from one Member State to another. On the one hand, this fragmentation creates uncertainty for public purchasers and businesses; on the other, it limits procurement’s ability to act as an effective driver of industrial transformation.

 In welcoming the Commission’s ongoing review of the EU public procurement framework, as well as complementary initiatives such as the Industrial Accelerator Act, the signatories reiterate that, to “fully unlock the role of procurement as a structural pillar of industrial and climate policy,” the Commission must pursue three key outcomes. The first is the “phasing out of the award criterion based exclusively on the lowest price, progressive implementation, and balancing of fundamental mandatory criteria with incentive criteria.” This means that the new framework must move away from award mechanisms based solely on the lowest price, and introduce mandatory criteria at the EU level “for low-carbon procurement”. In short, the procurement framework “should provide a set of horizontal and consistent rules applicable to all sectors and all Member States, helping to create a leading integrated European market for low-carbon products and materials.”

The second objective is to establish “a coherent methodological framework, aligned with existing monitoring and reporting systems.” To be effective and scalable, “low-carbon procurement criteria should be based on shared and consistent EU methodologies, building on existing regulatory frameworks rather than creating new parallel systems.” In particular, low-carbon procurement criteria should explicitly be based on methodologies consistent with the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as well as “ensuring alignment with other key EU instruments, including the carbon border adjustment mechanism, the EU taxonomy and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.” According to the companies behind the initiative, this will promote consistency in emissions accounting across different policies, avoid duplication of reporting obligations and reduce the administrative burden on businesses. 

The last outcome the Commission will need to address is “social due diligence”. The term refers to the process by which a company identifies, prevents, rectifies and discloses social and human rights risks arising throughout its value chain. The aim is to protect workers, partners and local communities, and the new framework must “systematically incorporate robust social due diligence requirements”, particularly for high-risk sectors – textiles, construction, electronics, agriculture and others. This means that public procurement should not encourage a race to the bottom on labour standards. Member States should instead “actively support contracting authorities by establishing national compliance frameworks, providing guidance on supply chain risks and creating dedicated platforms for sharing information and good practices on suppliers’ social performance.” This support aims to “effectively mitigate corporate abuses, verify compliance along global supply chains and transform public procurement into a real lever for eliminating social dumping in the Single Market.” 

Given that “Europe’s industrial transition requires strong and credible signals of demand,” public procurement “can play a central role in creating these signals, but only if supported by a coherent and ambitious regulatory framework,” the signatories concluded in the letter. The European Commission is currently reviewing the public procurement directives and has announced that it will publish a proposal to reform and update them in 2026.