Romania mandates green procurement just as the EU changes the rules of the game

On 9 September 2026, the European Commission publishes the proposed Regulation that would replace the 2014 directives with a single, directly applicable rulebook, with no national transposition. The final text will be negotiated in Parliament and Council — but the direction is clear from the draft that has already leaked. What this means for Romanian buyers, and what Ireland shows about the gap between having a law and implementing it.

What arrives on 9 September

The largest reform of European public procurement in a decade is weeks away — not as final law, but as an official Commission proposal.

On 9 September 2026, the Commission is due to publish the draft legislative act that will replace, in a single text, the three directives of 2014: Directive 2014/24/EU on classic procurement, Directive 2014/25/EU on utilities and Directive 2014/23/EU on concessions. The ordinary legislative procedure will follow — negotiations in the European Parliament and the Council, a process that usually takes 12–36 months, with significant amendments possible.

But a draft of the proposal has already leaked and been independently confirmed by Euronews, Agence Europe and several leading law firms. And the most important detail in the draft is not its content — it is its form: a Regulation, not a Directive.

What does that mean concretely? A Directive leaves each member state free to "translate" the rules into national law. Romania has Law 98/2016, Law 99/2016 and Law 100/2016 — its transpositions of the 2014 directives. Every state translated differently, added its own detail, created room for interpretation. A Regulation applies directly and uniformly across all 27 member states, with no transposition. One text, the same rules, the same interpretation.

That the change is real is confirmed by the resistance to it: in May 2026, 17 member states led by Austria, France and Germany (plus Norway) published a joint call asking the Commission to drop the Regulation form. The arguments: subsidiarity, disruption for hundreds of thousands of practitioners who are not EU law specialists, and the risk of two-tier rules where harmonisation is incomplete.

Pedro Telles, one of the most cited European academics in the field, analysed the call paragraph by paragraph and identified what sits beneath the arguments: the states implicitly acknowledge that transposing directives lets them adapt the rules in their own interest — and they are afraid of losing that freedom. After 50 years of directives, direct cross-border procurement has risen from 1–2% to under 5%. If the instrument has failed for half a century, giving the same instrument another chance is not prudence — it is inertia. Telles draws the parallel with GDPR: the move from Directive to Regulation was difficult, but the equilibrium afterwards is better than the one before.

Why the directives did not work

The 2014 directives were adopted with ambitious goals: simplifying procedures, increasing SME participation, opening cross-border markets, promoting strategic procurement — green, social, innovative. The "MEAT" framework — most economically advantageous tender — theoretically allowed price to be balanced against quality, environmental criteria and long-term value.

Twelve years on, the record is documented and bleak.

The European Court of Auditors, in Special Report 28/2023, found that the main objectives of the 2014 reform were not met: competition for public contracts declined, procedures were not simplified enough, and participation did not grow as hoped. The Commission's Single Market Scoreboard shows that across the EU more than half of contracts are awarded to the cheapest bid, and the average share of single-bidder procedures has reached 33% — with some states above 50%.

Sustainability criteria remained voluntary, under-used, or treated as an accessory rather than part of the purchasing decision. The directives opened the door, but obliged nobody to walk through it.

The European Parliament said so bluntly in its resolution of 9 September 2025, adopted with 432 votes in favour, 95 against and 124 abstentions: the current framework runs to 476 articles and 907 pages of law, and cutting it down is a precondition for simplification.

From what can be read in the leaked draft, the proposal clarifies the use of environmental and social requirements in award decisions, emphasises strategic procurement and life-cycle costing, introduces economic security measures on third-country participation, and expands digitalisation — including an obligation to create national public procurement data spaces interconnected at European level. The final text may differ significantly, but the direction is clear: more weight for quality and strategic criteria, less room for price-only awards. And through the Regulation form, the space for national interpretation — precisely the problem we wrote about in the previous article — shrinks drastically.

Romania: new law, old ecosystem

On paper, Romania has moved. And that deserves recognition, because it moved fast.

In April 2025 the Government approved the National Green Procurement Programme (PNAE) 2025–2030 — the first plan of its kind in Romanian history, with mandatory green procurement targets across 22 categories of products, services and works. First year of implementation: 2026. Government Decision 427/2025 sets the obligations and deadlines. ANAP Order 1,946/2024 lists the applicable environmental criteria. The legislative framework is complete.

Miruna Bohaltea, director of ANAP's Competence Centre for Strategic Public Procurement, stated in an interview for the European Commission on 14 July 2025 a truth worth hearing without softening: "Romania was, for years, the only EU member state without a national action plan for GPP, relying on voluntary implementation." PNAE corrects that — but what is happening beneath the legislation?

Practical tools

Romania has no equivalent of the Irish gppcriteria.gov.ie platform, where a buyer searches by keyword and downloads criteria ready to paste into tender documents. The criteria in Order 1,946/2024 exist, but as a normative act, not as a practical tool with search and download.

Training

The 72-hour ANAP-INA training programme includes no dedicated green procurement module. Bohaltea acknowledges in the same interview that the lack of knowledge, skills and practical training among contracting authorities remains "a critical challenge". Training on PNAE and GD 427/2025 comes almost exclusively from private training providers — paid, in small groups. Which means the obligation is for everyone, the training is for those who can afford it.

Monitoring

Zero. PNAE is, according to its own authors, "the first programme with dedicated monitoring elements" — which confirms that no mechanism existed until now. The first report will cover 2026. Until then, the only figure available comes from an academic study (Bilan, 2023) that manually checked technical specifications in tenders across three product categories: roughly 20% of tenders published between 2018 and 2022 were "green".

Comply-or-explain

Non-existent. If a contracting authority does not include green criteria in a procedure, it does not have to justify why. There is no consequence, no transparency, no question asked.

Now put the data side by side: GPP obligations across 22 categories, from 2026, for a system with no tools, no training, no monitoring and no accountability mechanism — and in six weeks, the European Commission publishes the proposal that opens the replacement of the entire legislative framework those obligations are built on.

And one detail that says more than any figure: as this article goes out, weeks before the official publication of the proposed Regulation that would replace the directives our entire procurement legislation rests on, no Romanian institution with responsibilities in the field has issued any public communication on the subject. No ANAP alert. No analysis on Romanian specialist platforms. No discussion in professional practitioner communities. Over the same period, Ireland ran workshops, launched a public consultation for its first National Procurement Strategy, and OGP officials are actively participating in European reform dialogues. The information exists — ANAP sits in the Commission's working groups. The communication does not.

What others did: Ireland

Ireland started from exactly the same place. A voluntary GPP plan from 2012, weak uptake, low awareness, no monitoring system, an unverified 50% GPP target. Sounds familiar.

The difference: between 2020 and 2024, Ireland did not just build legislation. It built an ecosystem. A case study published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development documents the transformation. Here is what Ireland built and Romania did not.

Ready-to-use criteria

The EPA developed national GPP criteria across 11 priority sectors — ICT, catering, cleaning, lighting, furniture, construction, transport, textiles, paper, heating equipment, energy-related products — and published them on gppcriteria.gov.ie, an online platform where a buyer searches by keyword or sector and downloads the exact clauses for the tender documents. They do not need to understand sustainability — they need to copy and paste. Romania: the criteria exist in Order 1,946/2024, but as a normative act, not as a tool.

Systematic training

The EPA delivered GPP training to public authorities between 2020 and 2022, published guidance (three editions, the latest in 2024), introductory videos and training presentations for suppliers, and runs annual "GPP in Practice" events with real case studies from contracting authorities that implemented green criteria — with the challenges, opportunities and criteria used, all published. Romania: PNAE training comes from private providers, paid, in small groups.

Annual monitoring

The EPA publishes an annual GPP monitoring report on government departments — the fourth in the series. The figures are public: 10% in 2021, 34% in 2022, 40% in 2023, 48% in 2024. They do not only know where they are — they know where they started and how fast they are moving. Romania: zero published reports.

Comply-or-explain

The "Buying Greener" 2024–2027 strategy requires authorities that do not include GPP criteria to justify why in their annual report. It is not a rigid mandate — it is an intelligent default: you use the green criteria, and if you do not, you explain. It shifts the starting point from "apply if you want" to "apply, or justify". Romania: no mechanism.

Market engagement

The Irish strategy explicitly encourages market consultation before tendering. Suppliers responded: Ecocem, a producer of cement with 70% lower emissions, expanded its Dunkirk plant as a direct response to the demand signal from public procurement. Markets adapt when they see a coherent signal — not a published law nobody applies.

The results are not only green. They are procurement results:

* Estimate from the Bilan 2023 academic study, three categories, 2018–2022; Romania has no official monitoring.

The figures demolish two myths at once. First: "if you do not buy on price, you exclude small firms" — Ireland awards 72% of contracts to SMEs with only 11% price-based awards. Second: "green procurement is a luxury for rich countries" — Ireland is not Norway. It is a country with a diversified economy that decided to build its ecosystem, not just its legislation.

Why green procurement works — and not for the reasons you think

Green procurement works as a reform vehicle not because it is "green", but because it forces contracting authorities to do exactly the things they usually avoid: calculate life-cycle cost (not just purchase price), consult the market (what can actually be delivered?), define clear and measurable specifications (not "the proposed approach" across 200 pages), document the decision (why we did or did not choose green criteria).

In other words: GPP works because it is a Trojan horse for good planning. You are not asking the authority to "be green" — you are asking it to plan, specify and justify. Green is the side effect of a purchase made properly.

The Irish Green Building Council says something in the case study, under remaining challenges, that condenses this entire article: the biggest gains come before the tender documents are written — from early design stages, from avoiding unnecessary purchases, from repairing and reusing existing assets, from contracts built around performance rather than quantity. That is not a GPP insight. It is the central insight of any procurement reform — and it is exactly the thesis of the previous article: control checks what happens at tender, but value is created or destroyed at planning.

What we are missing — an inventory, not an argument

At this point in the article, the diagnosis is made. What remains is the inventory.

A platform with ready-to-use criteria — the equivalent of gppcriteria.gov.ie. The criteria in Order 1,946/2024 turned into a digital tool where a buyer searches by category and downloads the clauses. Cost: modest. Impact: it removes the main practical barrier — "I don't know what to write".

A free training programme at scale — not in a hotel for a fee, but integrated into the ANAP-INA programme, with a dedicated GPP module. Ireland trained between 2020 and 2022. PNAE imposes obligations from 2026. Who trains the buyers between April 2025, when the plan was adopted, and January 2026, when the obligations begin? The question is not rhetorical — we genuinely could not find the answer.

An annual monitoring report — the first should cover 2026. Who produces it? ANAP? The Ministry of Environment? With what methodology? On what sample? Ireland built monitoring from year one. We built the obligation without building the measurement.

A comply-or-explain mechanism — if an authority does not include green criteria, let it justify why, publicly, in annual reporting. It is not a sanction — it is a question. But it is a question nobody asks today.

Interpretive alignment — the lesson from the previous article applies identically: if one audit body considers a green criterion discriminatory and another considers it mandatory, no rational buyer will use it. Without unified interpretation on green procurement, PNAE becomes exactly what happened to Art. 187(3¹): we changed the forms, not the results.

The Regulation solves one problem and creates another

The proposed European Regulation published on 9 September opens the way to solving, at continental scale, exactly the problem called for in the previous article: unified interpretation, directly applicable, without transposition. If the legislative process confirms the Regulation form, it is the most powerful structural lever available. And with it, part of the divergent interpretation that blocks national reforms today would disappear by definition.

But not even the best Regulation builds the local ecosystem. Ireland did not need a Regulation to make GPP work — it needed tools, training, monitoring and consistency, all built with the existing directives. A better Regulation applied by a system without tools produces the same result as an older Directive applied by a system without tools: compliance on paper, reality unchanged.

The reform is coming either way — in one form or another. The question is whether it finds us with the ecosystem built, or with just another new law we do not apply.

Sources

• Draft Regulation on public procurement — internal European Commission draft, not final; official publication of the proposal expected on 9 September 2026. The draft has been independently confirmed by Euronews, Agence Europe, McCann FitzGerald, Keystone Procurement and Pedro Telles. The text will be negotiated in Parliament and Council (ordinary legislative procedure, estimated 12–36 months); the final content may differ significantly.
• European Parliament — Resolution of 9 September 2025 on public procurement (2024/2103(INI)), adopted with 432 votes in favour, 95 against, 124 abstentions.
• European Court of Auditors — Special Report 28/2023 on public procurement in the EU: declining competition and unmet objectives of the 2014 reform.
• European Commission — Single Market and Competitiveness Scoreboard, Access to Public Procurement section, 2024 data.
• IISD — Ronja Bechauf, How Ireland Turned Green Public Procurement Into Standard Practice, case study, 23 July 2026.
• EPA Ireland — Green Public Procurement: Guidance for the Public Sector, third edition, 2024; annual GPP monitoring reports 2021–2024; the gppcriteria.gov.ie platform.
• Government of Ireland — Buying Greener: Green Public Procurement Strategy and Action Plan 2024–2027; Circular 17/2025.
• PNAE 2025–2030 — National Green Procurement Programme, approved by Government Decision 427/2025, April 2025.
• ANAP Order no. 1,946/2024 — environmental criteria applicable to product categories with environmental impact.
• Miruna Bohaltea, Director, Competence Centre for Strategic Public Procurement, ANAP — interview for Green Forum / European Commission, 14 July 2025.
• Bilan (2023) — Challenges for Upscaling Green Public Procurement in Romania: ~20% of tenders "green" across three categories, 2018–2022.
• National Public Procurement Strategy (SNAP) 2023–2027.

All figures are verifiable at the sources indicated. The European Regulation is at draft stage — the figures and mechanisms described may change during the legislative procedure. If you find an error, write to us — we will correct it and mark it.