This is the first article in a three-part series on what the modernized procurement framework means for you. In Part 1: what happens to contracting authorities when negotiation becomes the norm under the competitive procedure with negotiation?
What impact will the regulation have?
On September 9, 2026, the European Commission published a legislative proposal to modernize the European procurement framework. On paper, it looks like a topic for lawyers and procurement specialists. In practice, it affects everyone involved in IT procurement through European tenders, including the people who will actually use what gets bought.
Anyone who has been through an IT tender knows the pattern. Months go into building a requirements document meant to cover every angle. Every uncertainty becomes another requirement; every risk, another clause. Then the bids come in: technically compliant, legally watertight, and still not what the organization actually needs. Or the reverse happens, insufficient preparation, missing expertise, or a failure to anticipate scope leads to an incomplete request, leaving the contracting authority stuck with a result it isn’t happy with.
The conversation that should have happened between buyer and market simply never takes place in most procurement procedures. That’s about to change, now that the competitive procedure with negotiation is becoming the default..
What's changing?
Contracting authorities will now have room to negotiate with suppliers on every aspect of a contract, quality, scope, commercial terms, and innovation. After each round of dialogue, suppliers revise their bids, and the procedure gets refined further.
"The question is no longer whether you negotiate, but how."
A bigger role for the procurement team
Until now, most of the procurement team’s effort went in before publication: the tender had to be complete and airtight from the start. After that, the only way to adjust course was through written Q&A rounds.
The competitive procedure with negotiation shifts that effort. Buyer and suppliers now work together to sharpen the request itself, validating requirements, cutting unnecessary complexity, and drawing out innovation and improvements instead of just mandating them. That calls for a different skill set.
The negotiation phase also has to be worth suppliers’ time, since a strong pool of bids depends on it, as suppliers are investing scarce resources to take part. A successful negotiation phase comes down to:
- a well-prepared delegation with the right expertise at the table
- strong negotiation skills
- tight control over the process
- careful documentation of agreements and outcomes
- making sure the value achieved actually makes it into the contract
How do you capture what the regulation makes possible?
The modernized procurement framework gives contracting authorities a real shot at buying solutions that actually fit what the organization needs, developed in dialogue with suppliers. But that opportunity doesn’t realize itself.
Drawing on years of experience running negotiation-based procurement, Eraneos developed Value Based Sourcing as a best practice, built on four principles:
- Value-driven: the central question is always what value a requirement or solution adds
- Co-creation: buyer and suppliers build the solution together
- Short cycles: working in short iterations toward a better outcome
- Transparency and equal treatment: open with all suppliers, without sharing competitively sensitive information
Value Based Sourcing is the methodology for co-creating a solution with suppliers that fits the buyer’s actual needs as closely as possible, which puts it directly in line with how the modernized procurement framework expects contracting authorities to operate going forward. Part 2 covers how Value Based Sourcing is organized, what the process looks like, and what results it delivers.
