Portugal Loosens Its Public-Procurement Rules, Raising Direct-Award Ceilings and Scrapping the Mandatory Execution-Project Review

The government has approved the final version of a sweeping reform of the Código dos Contratos Públicos (Public Procurement Code), the rulebook that governs how the Portuguese state spends billions of euros each year on everything from school refurbishments to motorway repairs. Announced after the Conselho de Ministros (Council of Ministers) on 25 June, the overhaul follows a public-consultation round that drew more than 100 contributions and refines a draft first approved in mid-April.

Gonçalo Matias, the Minister for State Reform (Ministro Adjunto e da Reforma do Estado), framed it as “one more battle won in a broader war against bureaucracy.” The reform, he said, rests on three goals: simplification, better public services and economic growth.

What actually changes

Two changes will be felt most quickly by anyone who builds for, or sells to, the state:

• Higher direct-award ceilings. For goods and services, the ajuste direto (direct award, with no competitive tender) rises to €75,000 and the consulta prévia (prior consultation of at least three firms) to €130,000. For empreitadas (public-works contracts), the direct-award limit jumps to €150,000 and prior consultation to €1 million.
• The end of the mandatory execution-project review. The revisão prévia do projeto de execução — a compulsory pre-check of a project's technical design — is scrapped, a step the government says added delay without adding value.

The code also imports a “once only” principle, so bidders no longer have to resubmit documents the state already holds — a change officials estimate will strip out more than three million documents a year. Decisions move away from a lowest-price-wins logic toward weighing quality, efficiency, innovation and sustainability, and digital tools, including artificial intelligence, will help process and assess tenders. A new “spontaneous initiative” route even lets companies and research centres pitch unsolicited solutions to public problems.

Less red tape, or less oversight?

The government describes the philosophy as a shift from heavy formal controls to “trust with accountability.” It is the latest move in a deregulation drive that earlier stripped the Tribunal de Contas (Court of Auditors) of its visto prévio (prior approval) over the bulk of public contracts.

That direction worries some specialists. Lawyers who have studied the text warn that wider discretion is hard to separate from corruption risk: bigger direct-award thresholds mean more contracts handed out without a competitive tender. Several argue that if formal checks are loosened, transparency must be tightened in return — fuller written justification for direct awards, public disclosure and robust after-the-fact auditing — and question the wisdom of rewriting the rules now, while the European Union is itself revising its procurement directives.

For residents, the stakes are concrete. Faster, lighter procurement could speed up the public works that have stalled across the country — not least the schools, clinics and transport projects racing against looming recovery-plan deadlines. The open question is whether “trust with accountability” delivers the buildings without also opening the door to the favouritism the old paperwork was designed to prevent.