On 9 September 2026, the European Commission presented its proposed regulation on public procurement and concessions, the Public Procurement Act. If adopted as it stands, the text would repeal the three 2014 directives and replace them with a single regulation, directly applicable in all twenty-seven Member States.
Since then, comments and posts have been multiplying, and almost all of them focus on procurement itself. This article reads the same text through the lens of contract management and the contract lifecycle, distinguishing at each stage what is genuinely new from what French law already provides for. Because the regulation does more than rewrite the award rules: it shifts the burden of proof towards the execution phase, and assumes that this burden is prepared for from the drafting stage onwards.
A text that concerns the whole contract ecosystem
First, note that the shift from directive to regulation is not a minor legal technicality. Whereas a directive leaves each state room for adaptation and can produce twenty-seven different sets of rules, a regulation applies as it stands (think of the GDPR).
Moreover, this issue does not only concern public buyers. It concerns every stakeholder in the contract: tender evaluation methods for buyers, drafting for lawyers, evidence during execution for project managers, bid structure for bidders. As for contract managers, their position at the interface places them at the junction point, between what was promised in the tender, what was written into the contract and what actually happens on the ground.
The timeline calls for some perspective
Advice on implementing the Public Procurement Act (referred to as the "PPA" in this article) is already appearing across the web and on LinkedIn. For now, it's worth tempering this, since it is currently only a proposal, not a text in force. Before anything else, this proposal will have to go through Parliament and the Council, and it will very likely change. What's more, Article 149 of the PPA provides for entry into force twenty days after publication in the Official Journal, but with application deferred by two years.
At this point in the article, you're probably thinking: "two years, fine, I've got time to see how things go". This is, incidentally, the reasoning many people applied to the GDPR, and that many still apply to e-invoicing: a distant deadline, a sense of having time, then a general scramble in the final months. Except that while two years may be enough to prepare a draft contract or a bid, it remains fairly short at organisational scale. This article therefore aims to familiarise you with the main points likely to affect our day-to-day work as contract managers.
Impacts before signature
Strengthening the quality criterion in scoring
First, Article 98 of the PPA imposes a minimum weighting of 30% for quality criteria, which can rise to 50% for labour-intensive contracts.
This is actually only a partial novelty, since in France the public procurement code already restricts the sole price criterion and requires weighting (Article R2152-7). However, it sets no minimum threshold, even though case doctrine already restricts weightings that strip qualitative criteria of any real substance. In practice, moreover, looking at the DECP (Données Essentielles de la Commande Publique, France's essential public procurement data), it's clear that many buyers already weight technical value above 30%. In short, the text would mainly close the door on tenders where quality is a token gesture.
Article 98 of the PPA also opens up a possibility for public buyers: it allows them to depart from the minimum threshold where quality is guaranteed by other means, notably through execution clauses. The text thus offers an explicit choice between guaranteeing quality at scoring stage or at execution stage. This decision is made upstream, but must be followed through in practice.
The real issue: the contractual value of commitments
This shift in award criteria towards quality brings back a well-known question that is often poorly addressed: to what extent does the technical bid document commit a bidder once the contract is signed?
The answer partly depends on how the contract is drafted, since although several standard general terms and conditions (CCAG) include the technical bid among the constituent documents, subject to possible derogation, the CCAG Travaux (Works), for instance, leaves the decision to the client-side project owner.
The courts have also, on several occasions, had the opportunity to draw the consequences from this: a technical bid document only has contractual value if the contract documents provide for it (CAA Paris, 3 July 2013, No. 11PA05239).
So if 30%, or even 50%, of the score is based on measurable qualitative criteria, the gap between what is scored and what is enforceable is likely to become more costly. The question of "whether to make the technical bid contractual" would then become even more central at drafting and negotiation stage.
Formalising adjustment mechanisms
Still in terms of novelty, Articles 105 and 124 of the PPA create a standalone category: mechanisms for adjusting contract conditions. This is a set of predefined rules for adjusting revenue according to demand, indexation linked to objective indices or to input cost volatility, and payment adjustments tied to meeting performance targets. The PPA sets three conditions for these rules: they must be objectively justified, preserve the economic balance, and be drafted clearly, precisely and unambiguously.
Again, nothing revolutionary for French players, since Article R2194-1 already permits planned modifications in the form of review clauses, including price variation, provided they are "clear, precise and unambiguous". The wording is strikingly similar, and the DAJ, in its January 2026 technical guidance note, already recommends favouring this route for the predictability it brings. The PPA therefore appears here to be enshrining a doctrine that some Member States, including France, already apply.
Two additions are worth noting, though: the text expressly cites performance-linked payment adjustments, which legitimises bonus-malus mechanisms still viewed with caution; and it states that an adjustment based on these clauses is not a contract modification. The operational consequence is identical in both systems: the room for manoeuvre is exercised upstream. Whatever has been anticipated will sit outside the modification regime, everything else will fall within it.
Finally, regarding concessions, the text goes further: a structured assessment of the main economic risks before launching the procedure, with allocation between the parties (Article 120), and execution obligations formulated as measurable requirements, backed by indicators, verification methods and consequences (Article 119). Operating risk is nothing new: it lies at the heart of the French definition of a concession. The novelty, however, lies rather in the requirement to document the risk mapping and allocation before going out to tender. As a result, risk registers and performance monitoring would move from being good practice to being a requirement, which is rather a good sign for contract managers!
Impacts after signature
A single threshold, but conditional
Article 106 of the PPA keeps the distinction between substantial and non-substantial modification, and sets a single threshold of 15% of the initial contract value. This is not an absolute novelty, since French law currently sets thresholds of 10% for services and supplies and 15% for works (Article R2194-8). What we do see, however, is a unification of the threshold at 15%, which is a minor novelty.
Beyond the threshold, however, there is a genuine novelty, since the PPA sets conditions applicable to any modification, including non-substantial ones: it must meet an objective need arising during execution, be limited to what is necessary, and not alter the original economic balance in favour of the contract holder.
The traceability obligation
This traceability may be one of the most structuring points for contract managers. Indeed, Article 106 of the PPA requires the buyer, before modifying a contract, to establish, on the basis of objective and verifiable evidence, that the conditions are met, and to keep a detailed written record of the modification: justification, necessity, impact on the economic balance and on risk allocation. All of this must allow verification by control and audit bodies.
So while French law did not wait for a European text to set rules, the purpose of traceability is nonetheless different. Whereas in French law, traceability is mainly intended to allow the public accountant to check that a document exists (rather than its justification), the PPA would create an obligation to demonstrate, in writing and beforehand, the substance of the matter.
This would require continuous traceability from the triggering event onwards: what happened, when, why it fell outside the original scope, and what the economic effect is. You're probably thinking this sounds remarkably like a contract manager's tool: the deviation log! In this way, a link is formed with the pre-signature phase: commitments, performance indicators and resources described in the technical bid, once made contractual, will need to be checked against the reality of execution.
All of this makes a strong case, much to our delight, for the contract manager's involvement throughout the entire contract lifecycle!
Publicising the modification
The PPA provides that above 50%, a "public summary" must therefore be published before the modification takes effect. Below that threshold, any substantial modification must be published within twenty days. Here again, publicity is nothing new: Article R2194-10 already requires a modification notice in the OJEU, but only in two cases and only for formal procedures. What would change is the scope, the timeframe, and the fact that publication becomes a prerequisite above 50%. According to the essential public procurement data, only a minority of modified contracts cross this threshold: the exercise would concern a limited volume, but high-stakes operations.
Once again, this publicity requirement would call for rigour, and would therefore favour the involvement of contract managers, on both the contracting authority's side and the contract holder's side.
The end of the retrospective contract amendment
Article 106 of the PPA (or Article 125 for concessions) states that modifications cannot be used to remedy the contract holder's execution failures that are not justified by circumstances beyond its control. Here again, while French administrative courts did not wait for the PPA to penalise contract amendments that upset the economic balance of a contract, this would become a written prohibition expressly targeting the catch-up contract amendment.
Conclusion
The Public Procurement Act is not yet an applicable legal rule and will not be for several years. It does, however, point in a direction favourable to our profession: the text appears to be moving away from theoretical control, in favour of control through evidence.
For French organisations, there is no need to overreact: the public procurement code, DAJ doctrine and case law already anticipate a good part of these requirements, in some cases for a long time. For businesses in France, most of the announced upheaval looks more like a European catch-up exercise. Two points, however, appear to warrant genuine preparation: the obligation for prior written justification of modifications, and the accompanying publicity requirement.
Three workstreams follow from this, and should keep contract managers engaged throughout the contract lifecycle:
- Strengthen contract evolution clauses at drafting stage: indexation, scope adjustment, performance-linked mechanisms. This is the space that falls outside the modification regime, and the DAJ already recommends prioritising it.
- Maintain continuous traceability of deviations: this is clearly an invitation to set up deviation logs.
- Translate the commitments made in the bid into measurable indicators, and decide on their contractual value: whatever accounts for 30 or 50% of the score will eventually need to be verified, once enforceable. The contract manager will therefore need to be resourceful upstream, and rigorous during execution.