Allied For Startups' Position on the Revision of EU Public Procurement Rules

Public procurement is one of the EU’s strongest economic levers. Yet for too many startups and scaleups, it remains a closed shop.

Allied For Startups has submitted its contribution to the Call for Evidence on the revision of EU public procurement rules, calling for a reform that actually changes market outcomes.

From a startup perspective, the problem is not a lack of innovation. It is rational self-exclusion. High upfront costs, long and uncertain timelines, fragmented procedures and risk-averse design make bidding economically unsound for many innovative companies.

Our position is clear:

• Simplification must reduce real participation costs, not just formal requirements;
• Public procurement should reward the best products, performance, and user experience;
• Successful pilots must lead to scale, not restart the process from scratch;
• Cross-border access has to work in practice, especially below EU thresholds.

As discussions increasingly focus on how public procurement can support Europe’s competitiveness and economic security, it is worth being precise about how those objectives are translated into practice.

For startups and scaleups, resilience is not about labels or formal origin requirements. It is about whether procurement choices strengthen Europe’s capacity to innovate, scale and remain competitive over time, without unintentionally sidelining the very companies that are building and growing in Europe today.

Europe’s most innovative and fast-growth companies are international by design. They attract global capital, operate cross-border R&D and scale through integrated value chains, while building, employing and paying taxes in Europe.

Public buyers should focus on what actually matters for Europe’s economic security and value creation: European R&D and jobs, security of supply, interoperability, lifecycle robustness and credible exit options designed in a way that preserves competition and enables new market entrants to scale.

If procurement reform gets this right, it can become one of Europe’s most powerful demand-side tools for scaling innovation inside the Single Market. If it does not, Europe risks training its startups at home only to see them scale elsewhere.

We look forward to continuing the conversation with the European Commission and stakeholders across the ecosystem.