The European Court of Auditors (ECA) has published a report stating that over the last 10 years competitition for public contracts in the EU has decreased. Furthermore, the 2014 reform of the EU public public procurement directives has not only failed to reverse this trend, but in some cases even reduced competition.

According to the report little is being done to address the lack of competition; available data is not used systematically to identify root causes for the decrease and there are no coherent actions taken to reduce obstacles to competition. As such, many of the objectives of the 2014 reform to shorten and simplify procedures have not been met.

ECA recommends to clarify and prioritise public procurement objectives, close the gaps in the public procurement data collected, improve its monitoring tools to allow better analysis, deepen the root cause analysis and put forward an action plan to overcome key obstacle​s to competition in public procurement.

More information about the ECA report, including a data dashboard complementing it, can be found here.