From lowest price to best price-quality ratio: what the European Parliament resolution means for engineering services

The European Parliament has placed the award criterion at the political core of its position on the reform of the public procurement directives. Paragraph 38 of Resolution P10_TA(2025)0174 expressly identifies engineering services as a priority field in which to shift the lowest price criterion towards the best price-quality ratio.

The starting diagnosis

Recitals E and Z of the resolution supply the figures that justify the change of criterion:

The regime in force since 2014 already allows the most economically advantageous tender to be given priority, although administrative practice has tended towards the path of least effort, that is, towards objective scoring on price.

Paragraph 38: text and reading

Paragraph 38 states that awarding on price alone "could encourage unfair competition" and that it damages quality, sustainability and social standards. It argues that a greater number of contracts, especially in intellectual services, should be awarded on the basis of the best price-quality ratio, and it adds:

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Non-price considerations should carry substantial weight in the overall scoring and in the final decision on the award of contracts, especially for engineering services, which are essential to ensuring high-quality projects that are cost-effective in the long term.

Two ideas can be drawn from that passage which deserve a more detailed technical treatment.

The notion of "substantial weight"

The term substantial is not given a numerical value, although the preceding legislative debate has worked with reference figures of between 60 and 70 % for non-economic criteria in intellectual services. It is worth comparing this with the recent case of the Spanish state model tender documents for scheduled road passenger transport, where the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC, the Spanish competition authority) has questioned the move of the weight of the economic criteria from 60 to 40 % without sufficient justification. The exact balance will ultimately rest with the EU legislature and with national contracting authorities.

The express reference to engineering services

The specific mention is not merely rhetorical. Engineering services display three features that make price an insufficient indicator:

1. High marginal cost of error: a poorly drafted design gives rise to cost overruns during construction and operation that are several times the initial saving obtained on fees.
2. Asymmetric value of qualifications: the difference between an average designer and an excellent one bears on the final outcome more strongly than the range of variation in price.
3. Risk of abnormally low tenders going undetected by the statistical thresholds in customary use, as the CNMC has warned in its Report INF/CNMC/233/25 on transport concessions.

Recital M: the notion of the economically best solution

Recital M goes one step beyond price and speaks of the economically best solution. It amounts to a broader reformulation of the concept of the most economically advantageous tender:

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Winning tenders should be chosen on the basis of what the contracting entity considers to be the economically best solution among those offered, in order to foster a stronger quality orientation and greater flexibility in public procurement.

From a technical standpoint, the reformulation means accepting that price does not exhaust the economic analysis. Long-term cost-effectiveness, continuity of service, total life-cycle cost and territorial impact all become part of the analysis.

Connection with abnormally low tenders

Paragraph 38 closes with the express objective of "discouraging the submission of abnormally low tenders". Paragraph 57 adds that the Commission should "provide a harmonised methodology for assessing the concept of an abnormally low price".

Social clauses and horizontal criteria

Parliament links the change of approach to the horizontal clause in Article 18(2) of Directive 2014/24/EU, on labour and environmental law. Paragraph 65 cites the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-395/18 (the Tim case) and describes those obligations as "a cardinal value whose observance the Member States must ensure".

Paragraph 66 encourages the systematic integration of social criteria into procedures, always with due regard to economic viability, flexibility and the principle of subsidiarity. Paragraph 55, for its part, recalls that International Labour Organization Convention No 94 on labour clauses remains in force and calls for countries that do not comply with it to be excluded from access to Union procurement procedures.

Coexistence with the price criterion: technical guidance

Parliament does not aim to prohibit the price criterion; what it aims at is restoring the balance between criteria. Three technical pointers can be drawn from the text:

• Intellectual and engineering services: dominant weight for qualitative criteria (demonstrated experience, proposed methodology, team assigned to the contract, organisation of the work). Price remains a criterion, but it ceases to be the dominant one.
• Standardised supplies: price may retain a high weight, provided that the technical specifications properly guarantee the minimum quality required.
• Complex services and works: life-cycle value, sustainability, continuity of service and resilience as factors to be weighed alongside cost.

Implications for the Spanish contracting authority

Pending the adoption of the future directive, the Spanish contracting authority can already rely on the resolution for four specific purposes:

1. To justify the approval of tender documents that depart from price as the dominant criterion, with the explicit backing of the European Parliament's position.
2. To document the weight of non-economic criteria as substantial in engineering services, with an express citation of paragraph 38.
3. To review the abnormally low tender thresholds in the light of paragraph 57 and of the existing CNMC reports on the matter.
4. To align the design with the horizontal social clauses laid down in Article 18(2) of Directive 2014/24/EU and in the corresponding provisions of Ley 9/2017 (the Spanish Public Sector Contracts Act), along the lines of paragraphs 65 and 66.

The resolution is not binding law, but it is a very clear political endorsement of the direction the reform is likely to take.

Fuentes oficiales

Resolution P10_TA(2025)0174 — EUR-Lex

DO C/2026/1470 · 9 abril 2026

Text adopted, Spanish language version

Parlamento Europeo

Directive 2014/24/EU — Article 18, horizontal clause

UE

Report INF/CNMC/233/25 on the model tender documents for transport

CNMC · 16 octubre 2025