Name: Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Ordinary meeting
Uploaded: 2026-09-28T13:46:04+00:00
Duration: 9101 s

00:06 - 03:44

Speaker 2

So, good afternoon. Let's start our IMCO session. Thank you very much for joining us today's IMCO session. We have a busy agenda and we have had an interesting debate to the Industry Accelerator Act and now we want to start with our normal IMCO session. We start with point one, the adoption of the agenda.

The agenda can be adopted as proposed in the order of business if there are no remarks. I don't see any remarks, then I come to point two, the chair's announcements. The members were informed that the interpretation will be in the most of the EU official languages except for Maltese, Gaelic and Croatia. Speakers are invited to speak their mother tongue if it is one of the languages for which interpretation is available. I would like to remind you that the meeting is webstreamed live and the e-meeting application is available on the tablet or laptop to access the meeting's documents as IMCO is totally paperless.

I would like to inform you that the monthly IMCO newsletter is available on the IMCO website. And regarding the outcome of coordinators' decision by written procedure, I have two announcements to make. First, by written procedure, the coordinators agreed on 14th September on the 2027 IMCO missions' destinations, the number of seats per missions under the IMCO d'Hondt system and the order of missions. Mission one: Brazil, Brasilia and São Paulo, seven seats. Mission two: Italy, Rome, Vatican and Gioia Tauro, six seats.

Mission three: Japan, six seats. Mission four: Germany, Hamburg, seven seats. By written procedure, the coordinators decided on 22nd September to postpone the deadline for tabling amendment to the Inter-ITRE-IMCO report on the Industry Accelerator Act to 7th October at 14:00, with the overall timeline to be adjusted if necessary. And I want to inform you that the calendar of IMCO meetings for 2027 was endorsed by coordinators at their meeting of 10th of October. The calendar is available in the meeting documents and will be published on IMCO website.

Unless any adverse remarks are received by the end of the meeting, the minutes of the IMCO committee meeting of 10th September will be considered adopted. And this brings us to the first topic on our agenda today, the Public Procurement Act. The purpose of this exchange of views is to hear the Commission's presents and exchange views on the Public Procurement Act adopted by the Commission on the 9th of September and for members to express their views on the topic. Therefore, I would like to welcome Mr. Ehrenstein from the Commission for participating in this meeting and thanks them to take some time to present the Public Procurement Act. Dear colleagues, please signal by hand if you would like to request to speak for a catch-the-eye exchange.

We would then have the Commission's present the proposal, then members can make comments or ask questions that are then responsed by the Commission. Yes, all right, I give the floor to the Commission and I think Mr. Ehrenstein wants to speak.

03:44 - 06:54

Speaker 4

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, honorable members. I'm delighted to present the Public Procurement Act that the Commission adopted, the proposal of, for your consideration on the 9th of September. The objective of the Public Procurement Act is to make public procurement a more efficient public investment tool in the EU. There is two objectives: on the one hand, to simplify the how to buy, with the objective to let public buyers focus on quality outcomes instead of administrative procedures by creating a single coherent rulebook, introducing simpler and more flexible procedures, and fully digitizing procurement. Secondly, to make procurement more strategic, that's the what to buy, and to align the what to buy with our wider EU strategic policy objectives, so that we can focus on what we want to achieve with our public money.

Strategic objectives are security and resilience, social procurement, green procurement, innovation procurement, and European preference. I don't know if I can operate the slides or if someone will do that for me. Thank you very much. And to the next one already, please. Thank you.

So simplification first takes the form of creating a single rulebook, empowering public buyers to do their job. So this requires a clear set of rules. We have decided in our proposal to therefore unify the three existing main procurement directives, as well as procurement provisions from 21 sectoral EU acts into a single rulebook, a proposal for a single regulation. So directly applicable regulation, uniform application without gold-plating, with one integrated digital marketplace, to which I come in a moment. So empowering public buyers, how do we intend to do this?

Next slide, please. Thank you. We are making available three main procedures to public buyers: the open procedure, which largely mirrors the existing one; a dynamic procedure, mostly but not only for off-the-shelf purchases, where we create a pool of suppliers up front and then individual procurements are open to bids from this pool of suppliers that remains dynamic; and thirdly, an innovation procedure specifically for the purchase of innovative solutions that first need to be developed and are then deployed. Importantly, there is no conditions to the use of these three procedures. A lot of transparency and flexibility for public buyers to choose which of the procedures they would like to use, and then flexibility within the procedures as well.