Last week, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a new Regulation to modernise and simplify the EU's public procurement framework and make the process more similar to private procurement; offering greater flexibility, encouraging better market consultation, simplifying administrative procedures, allowing for crucial negotiations and making it easier for SMEs to compete across the Single Market. The aim is to help complete the Single Market for public procurement - which accounts for around 15% of the EU's GDP - and potentially, (mainly by cutting bureaucracy) deliver administrative annual savings of some €650 million. The revision responds to long-standing shortcomings identified by the European Court of Auditors, including declining competition, limited SME and cross-border participation, and the rise of single-bid procedures.  

The trade unions are seeing added benefits…

Says Oliver Roethig, regional secretary of UNI Europa, a trade union federation which represents seven million service workers, such as cleaners: “The Act is a clear opening to ensure €2.5 trillion in public spending promotes workers’ livelihoods through collective bargaining. Together with the whole European trade union movement, we demand that companies whose workers are covered by collective agreements are always given preference when awarding contracts.”

In 2024 in Brussels and 2026 in Paris and Dublin, cleaners and other essential workers mobilised for an end to the race-to-the-bottom for pay and working conditions in the current procurement rules. A Europe-wide survey found that a large majority of EU citizens (72%) support their demands of procurement rules that strengthen workers’ livelihoods through collective bargaining. 

Employers’ organisations, in particular across the labour-intensive cleaning,security and catering industries, also stress the need to move away from only focusing on price and the importance of collective bargaining. In an open letter, over 100 world-leading economists criticised the “dominant focus on the lowest price in tenders”, supporting workers’ demands for a reform that “strengthens collective bargaining”.

I see some interesting times ahead and I’d love to learn how you feel that the proposed changes will impact both your business and the cleaning sector in its entirety. Please email [email protected] with your comments.