Paris, September 23, 2025 — The OECD, backed by the European Union, has launched a two-year project to help six EU member states strengthen detection and reporting of bid rigging in public procurement.
The initiative, which began with a kick-off event on September 22 at the French Competition Authority in Paris, brings together competition agencies and procurement officials from Czechia, France, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, and Portugal. It aims to reinforce compliance with competition law, build institutional capacity, and promote fairer competition in public contracts.
Bid rigging is considered one of the most harmful anticompetitive practices, driving up costs, reducing quality and innovation, and undermining the delivery of public services. The OECD noted that cartels often remain hard to detect due to their secretive nature, low awareness among contracting authorities, and limited enforcement resources.
The project will focus on training procurement officials, judges, and non-competition enforcers to identify suspicious patterns, strengthening channels for reporting suspected cartels, and improving coordination between competition authorities and other public bodies.
Key outputs will include capacity-building workshops in all six beneficiary countries through 2026, an e-learning module on competition law for procurement staff, standardised reporting templates for bid-rigging suspicions, and a good practices report with recommendations for EU-wide application.
The Paris launch featured senior figures including Benoît Cœuré, President of the French Competition Authority; Judit Rozsa, Director of the European Commission’s Technical Support Instrument; and Ori Schwartz, Head of the OECD Competition Division. Representatives from each participating country’s competition authority also underlined the importance of international cooperation.
Workshops for contracting authorities will roll out across 2026, covering red flags in tendering processes, reporting mechanisms, and case studies from international practice. Separate sessions for judges and enforcement bodies will address judicial review, private enforcement, and legal standards in cartel cases.
The project runs until September 2027 and builds on a previous OECD initiative that developed similar tools for six other EU countries.
