IfM-Materialien 21.11.2023 | 2023 SME-friendly organisation of public procurement

The German government would like to amend public procurement without raising the access barriers for SME. Our analysis of publicly available statements on the amendment of public procurement in Germany, as well as a review of the international literature on the subject, show that SME experience barriers in the procurement process at almost every stage. Often these barriers are related to the contracting authorities or the legal basis. For this reason, the better equipment of the contracting authorities and the harmonisation of the legal framework and are important measures to improve the conditions for SME in Germany. However, a more challenging issue is to reconcile the various objectives of the amendment. We expect that especially the plans to strengthen the sustainable alignment of public procurement will have a negative effect on SME-friendliness. In this case, on solution would be to implement the proposed measures to reduce barriers to SME participation before prioritising the sustain-able alignment of procurement more strongly.