The 30% rule: what the new EU Public Procurement Act means for school and office furniture tenders

Schools rarely buy furniture from a catalogue. In most of Europe the buyer is a municipality or a regional authority, the purchase goes through a public tender, and the contract often goes to the lowest price on the last page.

On 9 September 2026 the European Commission proposed a regulation that could shift that balance. The Public Procurement Act (COM(2026) 590) would replace the three EU procurement directives from 2014 with a single regulation that applies directly in every member state, so the rules for a tender in Lyon and in Łódź would read the same.

For now it is a proposal. Parliament and Council have only started work on it, political agreement is targeted for the end of 2027, and the regulation would apply two years after it enters into force, realistically in 2029 or 2030. For distributors who sell into public tenders, that is enough time to get ready, which does not happen often with EU rules.

1. At least 30% of the score goes to quality

Today a contracting authority can award a furniture contract on price alone. The proposal makes the best price-quality ratio the default: quality criteria must carry at least 30% of the points. A buyer can weight them differently only with a justification, for example when quality is already fixed in the technical specification.

The Commission's argument rests on competition data. The European Court of Auditors found fewer bids per tender and a sharp rise in procedures with a single bidder over the past decade.

"Quality" in the proposal is a broad term. It can include environmental and social criteria, security, resilience, and extra points for European origin when the buyer uses the preference described below. For furniture, though, the criteria a buyer can defend most easily are the ones backed by documents: certification to EN 1729 for school chairs and tables, EN 16121 for storage, EN 1021 for upholstery fabrics, the formaldehyde emission class of the boards, FSC or PEFC chain of custody, warranty terms. Paperwork that rarely changed the result of a price-only tender will start to decide the close ones.

A certificate covers the models that were tested. The buyer, however, receives a delivery of hundreds of chairs, so consistency between batches matters as much as the test itself. This is the reason we covered robotic welding and automatic powder coating in earlier Inside GEROM issues.

2. "Buy European": who it actually keeps out

European preference got the most attention in the press. The proposal divides operators and goods into "covered" and "non-covered". Covered means the country of origin is a party to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) or has a trade agreement with the EU that includes procurement of that kind. For non-covered bidders and goods, a public buyer may:

• limit or exclude their participation;
• require a minimum share of covered origin in the offer;
• reject a tender if less than half of its content is covered;
• give covered offers extra points or a price advantage in the evaluation.

Using these tools is the buyer's choice. They become mandatory only where EU law makes them so for a specific sector. Covered also reaches beyond the EU. Whether a given country qualifies depends on the agreement and on the type of buyer, and the Commission plans a free online tool to check it. Ukraine, for example, has been a GPA party since 2016, and decisions taken under the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement in 2024 opened supply contracts of central, regional and local authorities on both sides.

The goods most exposed come from countries that have no procurement agreement with the EU. A distributor whose range depends on such supply may find that a municipality excludes it, or that a mixed offer falls below the 50% line.

For tenders it helps to know the origin of each product and of its main components. School furniture is often assembled from parts made in different places: steel frames, plywood shells, boards, fittings. In a mixed set for a classroom, the share of covered content has to be calculated.

3. Qualification and framework agreements

Selection criteria are limited to what is necessary and proportionate. Excessive turnover requirements are cut back, and a buyer will need a reason to ask for previous public-sector experience. Smaller and newer furniture distributors, who often dropped out at the qualification stage, will find it easier to reach the evaluation.

Framework agreements get a cap of three years with one supplier and five with several, against four years today. Contracts will come back to the market more often, both for those who hold them and for those who lost them.

The ESPD form would in practice be replaced by an electronic eligibility service. A company confirms its exclusion and selection data once and shares that profile with buyers, instead of filling in the same form for each tender.

4. The race starts with the procurement plan

Buyers will have to publish a procurement plan at the start of each budget period and announce market consultations in advance. The proposal also adds a dynamic procedure: suppliers join a system, and the individual competitions inside it are visible only to its members. A supplier who joins after the launch misses the competitions already held.

School furniture deliveries cluster around the start of the school year. Under the new rules, the useful moment to act is when a municipality publishes its plan, which comes earlier than the tender notice for the next school year.

5. Thresholds stay where they are

The EU thresholds do not change: €140,000 for supply contracts of central government and €216,000 for sub-central authorities such as municipalities and regions. Below them, national rules apply. A single school ordering thirty desks stays well under the line, while a framework covering all schools of a city can easily exceed it.

What a distributor can do now

The text will change during the negotiations, and the 30% rule, the five-year cap and the 50% origin line are all still open. Most of the preparation, however, is useful under any version.

1. Keep one file per product with every certificate, test report and declaration, showing the standard, the issuing body and the validity date.
2. Know the origin of each product and its main components, and have it confirmed in writing by your supplier.
3. Follow procurement plans and market consultations in your regions, in addition to tender notices.
4. Describe quality in your offers with measurable parameters: test levels, warranty period, material classes.
5. Ask your suppliers which documents they can provide for a tender and how quickly.

We hold IBIC (Warsaw) certificates for school chairs and tables to EN 1729 and for storage furniture to EN 16121, our upholstery fabrics are certified to EN 1021, and we have FSC chain-of-custody certification. Our furniture comes with a 2-year warranty, and documents for specific models are available on request for tender preparation.

Price will keep its weight in school furniture tenders. From around 2029 it will share the score with quality, and the preparation for that can start now.