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Public procurement is no longer just about buying goods and services at the lowest price. For cities, it has become one of the strongest tools to shape markets in line with public goals delivering climate action, social inclusion and innovation.

This shift was at the centre of the recent Big Buyers Working Together annual event where concrete examples from across Europe showed how procurement decisions increasingly affect how public authorities work, what services they deliver and how quickly they can respond to major challenges.

Procurement as a strategic tool

In the City of Oslo, public procurement is a key lever for climate action. The city spends more than €3 billion each year on goods, services and investments, from construction sites and transport to schools and water systems. How that money is spent matters.

“Public procurement is among our strongest tools for climate action,” says Espen Nicolaysen, Head of Sustainable Procurement at the City of Oslo. “Through systematic demand, clear goals and standardised requirements, we have learned that this purchasing power can shape entire markets.”

By demanding zero‑emission solutions in construction and transport, Oslo helped create demand where little existed. Since 2020, the city has delivered more than 200 zero‑emission construction projects. From January 2025, all municipal construction sites must be zero emission, and last year around 94% of public construction projects were already electrified.

In Madrid, procurement plays a different but equally strategic role. The city’s digital transformation strategy, Madrid Digital Capital, uses procurement to align innovation, governance and public services across a large administration of 20,000 employees.

“This is not about technology,” explains Marta Cruz, Advisor at Madrid City Council. “It is about governance, coordination, collaboration and public procurement.”

Madrid has introduced a common contract structure for digital projects, with mandatory work packages on areas such as artificial intelligence, co‑creation with citizens and capacity building. This gives suppliers clarity and helps the city ensure that innovation supports wider public goals. It also encourages collaboration between companies, as no single provider can deliver everything alone.

Rising costs, climate targets, social expectations and rapid technological change all converge at the point where public money meets the market. This focus on procurement comes at a decisive moment at EU level, as the European Commission prepares a revision of the Public Procurement Directive.

Henning Ehrenstein, Head of Unit for Public Procurement at DG GROW, stresses that implementation on the ground must go hand in hand with legislation. “One thing is the law that is made here in Brussels. The other thing is how it is applied in practice: learning from each other, sharing experiences, and seeing what actually works and what does not,” he said.

For the Commission, initiatives that connect public buyers across Europe are therefore essential. They help bridge the gap between policy ambition and day‑to‑day procurement decisions.

What works and why

Across buyers and sectors, several factors consistently make strategic procurement work.

First, clear political direction and long‑term goals. Oslo’s experience shows that predictable demand gives suppliers the confidence to invest. “Markets can be built without large subsidies,” says Hallstein Bjercke, Vice Mayor for Finance in Oslo. “But it depends on the ability to set ambitious and predictable requirements.”

Second, standardisation and shared tools, developed collectively rather than buyer by buyer. This is where initiatives such as Big Buyers Working Together make a concrete difference. Through the project, public buyers have jointly developed practical, reusable tools that translate policy ambition into day‑to‑day procurement work. These include:

• Common definitions, such as a shared understanding of what socially responsible procurement means, helping cities work from the same baseline.
• Criteria libraries and model clauses, allowing procurement teams to integrate social, environmental and circular requirements without starting from scratch.
• Publicly accessible databases, such as inventories of zero emission construction machinery, which show what is already available on the market and help buyers set realistic and ambitious requirements.
• User friendly online guides, like the sustainable solar panel guide, which allows buyers to compare manufacturers against sustainability criteria including carbon footprint, forced labour risks and circularity.

Third, early and structured dialogue with the market. Buyers repeatedly stressed that engaging suppliers before launching tenders helps test ambition, clarify what is feasible and avoid unintended consequences later in the process.

For example, in the transition to zero‑emission construction sites, Copenhagen started with award criteria before moving to minimum requirements, while signalling future expectations to the market in advance. This gave suppliers time to adapt and invest, instead of being caught off guard by sudden changes.

Similarly, Pawel Kaczkan, Strategic Procurement Advisor at Climate‑KIC, argues that more interactive procedures are often necessary to deliver long‑term public goals. “If we want to achieve a green transition, we need to go further than price‑only criteria,” he said, pointing to competitive dialogue and pre‑commercial procurement as ways to build trust and openness between public buyers and suppliers.

Finally, breaking down silos inside city administrations. Procurement works best when it supports climate, social, digital and economic goals together, rather than operating as a stand‑alone function.

Legal uncertainty standing in the way

Despite growing ambition, public buyers were clear that strategic public procurement is still hard to deliver in practice.

One of the most persistent barriers is legal uncertainty. Even when EU rules allow the use of environmental and social criteria, many public buyers remain cautious.

As Lois Pimentel Iglesias from DG GROW points out, this uncertainty has not disappeared with time: “Even ten years after the 2014 directives, there are still cases before the Court of Justice asking whether certain social considerations are allowed.”

This uncertainty often pushes authorities towards price‑only criteria, not because they are preferred, but because they are perceived as safer.

A second challenge is capacity and time pressure. Even where political ambition is high, procurement teams often work under tight deadlines and with limited resources. In practice, this makes it difficult to redesign tenders from scratch.

As Veerle Labeeuw from Circular Flanders explains, procurement officers are frequently asked to move very fast: “Often, your internal clients ask you something and in one week you must write your tender. It’s much easier to copy a previous one.”

This time pressure helps explain why many authorities continue to rely on familiar templates and price‑based criteria, even when they know these no longer reflect broader city goals.

The same issue was echoed by Hallstein Bjercke, who stressed the importance of standardised requirements in Oslo precisely because individual departments do not have the time or expertise to reinvent approaches for every tender: “Each unit does not have to invent the wheel each time. They don’t necessarily have the time or the knowledge.”

Cities also highlighted the difficulty of balancing ambition with market access, especially for small and medium‑sized enterprises.

Speaking from Madrid’s experience, Marta Cruz describes the trade‑offs clearly: “If you go very far on sustainability or innovation, it becomes much easier for big companies than for SMEs. Finding the right balance is one of the hardest parts.”

Madrid’s response has been to design tenders that encourage collaboration between suppliers, allowing smaller companies to contribute alongside larger ones. But Cruz stressed that this equilibrium is never easy to get right.

Another recurring obstacle is contract management. Setting ambitious criteria at the tender stage is only the beginning; ensuring they are delivered over the life of the contract is often where things break down.

“You can put sustainability criteria in the tender, but then it’s in the hands of the internal client. As a procurer, it’s not always easy to follow up,” shares Labeeuw. She described cases where sustainability ambitions were later overruled by auditors or cost considerations, undermining the original objectives.

Finally, buyers pointed to the challenge of fragmentation: across departments, levels of government and legal frameworks. Without shared standards and clearer guidance, public buyers are left to navigate complex and sometimes conflicting expectations on their own.

Collaboration as the multiplier

Public buyers repeatedly pointed to cooperation as real accelerator of change. Through Big Buyers Working Together, for instance, they are building knowledge together across different procurement areas and learning how to apply it in each own’s local context.

For example, Lukas Sloet from the City of Amsterdam described how early work in the solar panel community of practice focused on detailed guidelines and templates. But participants quickly realised that these were hard to use in practice across different administrations.

“Everyone has their own documents, their own templates and their own ways of working,” he said. This insight led to the development of a more user‑friendly online guide that allows buyers to select sustainability criteria and compare manufacturers.

Another strong learning point was the value of cross‑cutting collaboration. Many challenges, such as forced labour risks or circularity, do not sit neatly within one procurement category.

For public buyers further advanced in certain areas, collaboration also creates a positive spill‑over effect. In the zero‑emission construction community, Claus Wilhelmsen from the City of Copenhagen explained how seeing what other cities had already achieved helped raise ambition elsewhere. Evidence shared within the group showed that zero‑emission machinery is technically feasible, increasingly affordable and delivers wider benefits such as reduced noise and air pollution. This shared evidence base gave others confidence to act.

At the same time, buyers were clear that collaboration is not about copying solutions wholesale. What they value most is the ability to adapt proven approaches with the local context in mind; learning what works, what does not, and why.

As Hallstein Bjercke put it, the next challenge is scale: “What works in Oslo must work across Europe.” Coordinating demand, sharing requirements and learning together allows buyers to amplify their impact in ways no single authority could achieve alone.

In this sense, Big Buyers Working Together functions as a collective learning space helping public buyers move faster, reduce risk and turn individual successes into shared progress.

Looking ahead: what buyers want from EU procurement rules

For many public buyers, the upcoming revision of the EU Public Procurement Directive will determine whether strategic procurement becomes standard practice.

Public buyers that are already pushing boundaries want reassurance that they can continue to do so.
“There is still uncertainty about how far we can go,” said Bjercke. “We need to trust that this is legal, that this is okay, so we can push markets even further.”
For buyers like Oslo, clarity is about giving procurement teams the confidence to act without fear of legal challenge.

Buyers also highlighted that lowest‑price criteria are often used because they feel safer, a direct consequence of the legal uncertainty many still face.

“If I could ask for one thing, it would be to foster collaboration among cities and public administrations. Strategic public procurement is hard, and when one city finds a good solution, it should be easier to replicate it across Europe,” says Marta Cruz.

Buyers also call for greater coherence between procurement rules and other EU legislation, including sustainability reporting and due‑diligence requirements. They warned that overlapping frameworks can create confusion rather than clarity for public buyers and suppliers alike.

Ehrenstein outlined three overarching priorities guiding the Commission’s work:

• making procurement a more effective public investment tool through simplification and legal coherence
• strengthening digitalisation, including interoperable procurement platforms
• enabling more strategic procurement, particularly on environmental and social objectives

He emphasised that digitalisation is not a technical add‑on, but a precondition for making simplification and strategic procurement work in practice. Without better data and interoperable systems, he warned, “we have nice rules, but they remain hollow.”

Together, their messages converged on a clear point: the revised Public Procurement Directive should remain a horizontal framework focused on how to buy, while making it easier, safer and more coherent for public buyers to use procurement strategically, and to do so consistently across Europe.

For cities, the message looking ahead is clear. Public procurement is already delivering results on the ground — from zero‑emission construction to digital innovation. The next step is ensuring that EU rules enable more cities to act with confidence, consistency and speed, turning individual success stories into shared European progress.