TED vs. Prozorro: How the EU Spends Public Money, and Will Ukraine Now Procure the Same Way?

In spring 2027, the new Law of Ukraine on Public Procurement will enter into force. It is the first major step toward aligning Ukraine’s procurement rules with EU law. 

Public procurement falls under Cluster 1, Fundamentals, whose negotiating chapters were opened in June 2026. This means our procurement policies will be among the first to be closely examined for compliance with the EU directives. At the same time, this cluster will be the last to close, so it will remain under the most intense scrutiny throughout the accession process. 

To understand what will actually change, we first need to look at how Ukrainian procurement differs from procurement in the EU.

The EU has higher thresholds 

Unlike Ukraine’s public procurement law, the EU directives set detailed rules only for the highest-value contracts within the EU single market, meaning those above certain value thresholds. Below those thresholds, the directives set out general direction, approaches, and principles, and detailed regulation is left to the national legislation of member states. 

The EU sets explicit value thresholds only for procurement that must be advertised in TED (Tenders Electronic Daily). These are €140,000 (about UAH 7 million at the current exchange rate) for supplies and services, and €5.4 million (UAH 274 million) for works. Below these thresholds, each country decides for itself how, where, and from what minimum value procurement must be advertised, and national rules can vary considerably. 

Here is a simplified overview for general contracting authorities. (The directives also set separate rules for contracting entities in certain sectors, namely monopolies and utility companies.) 

As the table shows, even after the new version of the public procurement law takes effect next spring, Ukraine will still have the lowest thresholds for competitive procurement in Europe. We are free to set them ourselves, so this reflects our own approach rather than an EU requirement. For Ukraine, especially in wartime, spending budget funds as efficiently as possible is critical, and transparent public tenders are the best way to achieve that.

In EU member states, national thresholds for fully competitive procedures are much higher than ours (as are prices, especially for services and works). Below those national thresholds, contracting authorities often use various types of negotiated procedures.

Some regulation may be delegated to the regional level, as in Germany, where individual federal states can set their own thresholds for direct awards. Elsewhere, as in Poland, below-threshold procurement is governed by the internal rules of individual contracting authorities.

In Ukraine, regulation will remain very clear and detailed at the level of the main national law. A substantial share of procurement will either be conducted competitively through Prozorro or, in the case of direct awards, still have to be reported in the system.

Procurement is faster in Ukraine

The EU reformed its public procurement rules in 2014, and one of the main goals was to simplify procedures. However, in its report on public procurement in the EU from 2011 to 2021, the European Court of Auditors found that the reform not only failed to achieve this goal but that the situation had actually worsened. In 2011, the average time from the opening of tenders to the contract award decision was 62 days. By 2021, it had risen to 96 days.

In 2025, according to the Public Procurement Data Space (PPDS), a system that consolidates data on above-threshold procurement from TED and four national e-procurement systems, the average decision-making time in open procedures across the 27 member states was 143 days. 

Italy, at 209 days, pushes this average up considerably. But even in countries where decisions are made much faster, selecting a winner takes several months.

Ukraine does not track decision-making time. Instead, it measures lot duration, from publication of the tender notice to publication of the contract. In other words, the EU measures only part of the procurement process, while we measure the whole thing. In 2025, the median lot duration for open tenders with special features (the standard tender type since the start of the full-scale war) was 22 days. 

That means, in the time it takes the EU to reach a decision on a single procurement, Ukraine can complete six and a half procurements from start to finish.

Procurement will take longer once the new law enters into force. Open tenders will last at least about 28 days, so the median duration will also increase, partly because we have extended the minimum time limits for the submission of tenders. Even so, Ukrainian procurement will still be several times faster than procurement in the EU.

Non-price criteria 

Our system is often criticized on the grounds that contracting authorities cannot buy high-quality goods because price is the only thing that counts in Prozorro. 

In fact, Ukrainian public procurement does allow the use of non-price criteria or life-cycle costing. This means tenders can be evaluated not only on price, but also on quality and on costs related to subsequent use, such as the warranty. 

Contracting authorities simply use this option very rarely. The most common reasons are that they do not know how, and they fear scrutiny and negative findings from oversight bodies.

In 2025, non-price criteria were applied in less than 0.26% of procurements where this option was available. 

In the EU, non-price criteria are far more common. 

In 2025, procurements using them accounted for 58.5% of tenders. The share varies widely across countries, but even in Slovakia, which has the lowest rate, it stands at 10.4%. The highest rate is in Croatia, at over 99%, because the country at one point banned procurement without non-price criteria.

Ukraine should definitely move toward using them more often. They are a tool that makes procurement more efficient and flexible. 

However, this shift needs to be gradual and well thought out. 

In particular, Ukraine first needs to work with contracting authorities and refine legislation so that the use of non-price criteria is clear. To that end, the new law provides for the development of a relevant methodology. It also sets out a gradual phase-out of the cap on the weighting of non-price criteria in tender evaluation. 

In the wrong hands, a good tool can become a means of discrimination. 

***For example, non-price criteria can be used to replicate the so-called “barrier” scheme.

In effect, a contracting authority can state that it is willing to pay significantly more if the supplier agrees to wait six months or a year for payment. Few companies, especially today, would accept such terms. Meanwhile, the authority pays its preferred company, which is the one that wins, much sooner and receives the difference as a kickback. In practice, such payment schemes are very difficult to detect and control.

What is already aligned with the EU 

Our thresholds are still much lower than in the EU, our procurement will remain faster, and restrictions on non-price criteria will be lifted gradually… There are plenty of differences. So how does the new law compare with the rules and practices of the EU and its member states?

First, we have deliberately slowed down our procurement to encourage more competition. We extended both the time limits for the submission of tenders and the time limits for review procedures, specifically for procurement above the threshold for which the EU directive sets more detailed rules.

Many of the changes harmonized definitions, such as what constitutes a contract or a contracting authority. Others added detail: we developed rules on subcontracting in works contracts, contract termination, and preliminary market consultations.

Among the most fundamental and long-awaited changes: once the new law enters into force, framework agreements will be available not only for supplies but also for services and works. They will also be concluded not only following open tenders, but through other procedures as well. 

New procurement methods will also be introduced.

These include design contests, innovation partnerships for procuring cutting-edge technologies, and the dynamic procurement system (a framework agreement with elements of electronic catalogs that new participants can join at any time), a method that could prove very convenient for reconstruction. There will also be more flexibility for contract modifications.

Ukraine is still waiting for the European Commission’s assessment of the adopted law. 

***The law will very likely need to be amended.

On the other hand, only the rules on public procurement have been improved so far. To close the relevant negotiating chapter, Ukraine still needs to work on rules for defense procurement, procurement by contracting authorities in certain sectors, and public-private partnerships (the European Commission is not satisfied with what we have done in this area). It also needs to strengthen oversight by the State Audit Service, improve review procedures at the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, and speed up court proceedings in public procurement cases.

The EU is not standing still

While preparing this article, our team noticed a whole wave of updates to national public procurement laws in EU countries, including increases in thresholds. Poland updated its procurement legislation in summer 2025, and this year Germany and Croatia also revised their thresholds.

But the most interesting development is something else. 

For several years, the EU has been preparing a major overhaul of the procurement directives themselves, which have not been comprehensively revised in more than a decade. Just recently, on September 9, the European Commission published its proposal. The main plans are to:

•  merge the three directives into a single regulation;
• connect national systems through a centralized public procurement data hub (PPDS) with common data standards;
• collect data on the entire cycle, from planning to payment and contract completion;
• reduce the number of procurement procedures to essentially three main ones: open, dynamic, and innovation;
• introduce a baseline principle under which quality (non-price) criteria must account for at least 30% of the weighting in tender evaluation, making them mandatory;
• introduce several variations of a preference mechanism for companies from the EU and from countries covered by the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement.

The proposal still has to be considered and adopted by the Council of the EU and the European Parliament, so it may change significantly. In any case, it will not take effect for some time. But we need to understand that updated EU rules will mean updating our own legislation again, whether as a candidate country or as a member state.

Still, at the EU level, the directives set out approaches and contain relatively detailed rules only for very high-value procurement. For everything else, each country has its own national regulation. 

This means Ukraine will also be able to preserve the achievements of its public procurement system. EU integration in public procurement should not be seen as switching to someone else’s rules. Rather, it is an opportunity to adopt the best European practices to strengthen what we already have. 

This material is funded by the European Union. Its content is the sole responsibility of Transparency International Ukraine and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.