According to an opinion to be adopted in CoR's next plenary session, the European Commission failed to simplify the current legislation on public procurements. The CoR's Commission for Economic and Social Policy (ECOS) regrets that the European Commission proposals will entail administrative burden, particularly for local and regional authorities.

The Commission for Economic and Social Policy (ECOS) in the Committee of the Regions (CoR) adopted an opinion which highlights the need for a much simpler regulatory framework for public procurement. According to the ECOS Committee, new provisions of the directive add to the administrative burden for contracting authorities. The proposal to the revision of the public procurement Directives was presented in December 2011. Moreover, the CoR draft opinion stressed that the European Commission proposes a procedure heavily focused on fairness and transparency but which puts little focus on efficiency.

The cities and the regions estimates that the new European Commission proposals are too difficult to understand and extraordinarily detailed, which does not facilitate the participation of SMEs and does not encourage cross-border trade. The CoR draft opinion on the other hand argues that there needs to be a balance between fairness, transparency and efficiency and that the overall focus should be not on processes but on the outcome and that the overarching objective should be that a procurement procedure results in a good deal for taxpayers.

The draft opinion also rejects the idea of compelling Member States to establish a public oversight body on public procurement as well as rules forcing the procurer to reopen the procurement procedure when a contract need modifications. Moreover, the Committee of the Regions insists that the current distinction between priority services (list A) and non-priority services (list B) – lighter procedural rule applies to the latter - must be retained.