Simplification is crucial for the EU.

The mayors of several cities and municipalities within Baden-Württemberg have united to call for more decision-making freedom in procurement matters, particularly in the awarding of planning and engineering services. This initiative comes as a response to the current EU regulations that have led to increased complexity and cost for public projects.

The working group of mayors, organized within the Baden-Württemberg Municipal Conference, developed a position paper on the execution rules for awarding planning and engineering services from January to March 2025. However, the specific cities and municipalities involved in this working group remain unspecified in the search results.

The mayors are concerned that especially smaller municipalities are burdened by the need to build up or buy resources for their procurement projects due to the new regulations. They argue that these tasks, which must now be awarded according to EU law, are causing unnecessary expenses and delays.

To address these concerns, the mayors have proposed several measures. They suggest increasing the proportion of planning services that can be awarded freely, provided at least three offers have been obtained. They also argue for linking the threshold values for planning services to those for construction services, and for revertiing to individual assessment for determining threshold values for planning and engineering services.

One of the key demands in the mayors' paper is the abolition of the assignment of planning services to supply services. They also argue against further complicating awarding rules, such as lowering threshold values or bundling different contract areas. Instead, they suggest simplifying EU-level regulations for both cities and companies.

The mayors have presented five demands in total, aiming to streamline the procurement process and promote the use of regional planning offices. They argue that regional planning offices are valuable for the further operation of buildings and addressing other problems that may arise. They also contend that the attention paid to the process and building quality of the respective offices can be much greater when using regional planning offices, similar to what a private builder would do.

The mayors' paper has been submitted into the EU consultation process on procurement law. It can be found under the Baden-Württemberg Municipal Association's website. The mayors also express a desire to award more contracts to regional planning offices, which they believe will benefit both the municipalities and the regional economy.

One of the issues highlighted in the paper is the deletion of paragraph 3, paragraph 7, sentence 2 of the procurement ordinance, which has led to many public planning tasks exceeding EU threshold values. As a result, the construction of a single-group kindergarten requires a Europe-wide tendering of almost all planning services, which increases the time and cost of the planning phase almost tripled due to the current EU tendering guidelines.

In conclusion, the mayors of Baden-Württemberg are advocating for simplified EU procurement rules to help smaller municipalities and promote the use of regional planning offices. Their position paper, which can be found on the Baden-Württemberg Municipal Association's website, outlines five demands to address these issues and streamline the procurement process.