eForms

What are eForms?

eForms are the European Union legislative standard for procurement data used by public buyers to publish notices in the Supplement to the Official Journal of the EU on the TED website.

These standard forms were established in 2019 by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1780. The Annex of the Regulation contains details on how eForms should be used to publish procurement notices. For instance, it defines and describes the business terms and determines if they are forbidden, mandatory or conditionally mandatory for each type of notice.

The eForms Regulation has been amended twice, in November 2022 and in December 2023. Several pieces of sectoral legislation have also required the inclusion of certain fields in eForms.

Public procurement notices could be published with the eForms standard since November 2022 and eForms became mandatory in October 2023. eForms replaced the previous standard forms that complied with Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2015/1986.

What is the purpose of eForms?

eForms serve multiple functions. Besides their primary role in publishing notices on TED, they are also used for data collection and have the potential to support policy makers and reusers.

Concretely, eForms aim to:

• increase economic operators’ ability to find relevant notices;
• reduce administrative burdens for buyers;
• increase governments’ capabilities to make data-driven decisions about public spending; and
• make public procurement more transparent for citizens.

Types of public procurement notices in eForms

eForms standardise the following form types:

• Consultation

Pre-market consultation forms may be used by public buyers to get a clearer view from economic operators on available products, works and services for a foreseen competition. At this stage, the consultation notices are not associated to a specific procurement procedure.

• Planning

Planning forms may be published before the start of a call for competition as prior information notices or periodic indicative notices. Planning notices are not initially linked to a procurement procedure but they are usually succeeded by one or more Competition notices that will link back to a Planning notice.

• Competition

Competition forms are used to announce different types of calls for competition, though a notice of a contract, a concession or a design contest. A Competition notice provides details on how the procurement procedure will be carried out, including if the procurement is divided into lots, the place of performance, the links to the procurement documents, and the deadlines by when economic operators can participate or submit tenders.

• Direct Award Prenotification

Direct Award Prenotification forms (also called Voluntary Ex-Ante Transparency notices) allow buyers to announce their intention to award a contract directly (i.e. without prior call for competition) to one or more economic operators. In contrast to the Result notices, DAP notices are published prior to signing the contract.

• Result

Result forms are used to announce the outcome of a procurement procedure. They refer to the Competition notice and provide information about the award, such as the value of the contract or concession, the winning tenderers, the number of tenders received, as well as information on strategic procurement. A Competition notice can lead to more than one Result notice, for example, when lots are awarded at different moments in time.

• Contract Modification

Contracts may need to be modified or amended during their execution. If a new procurement procedure is not needed, then a Contract Modification notice details the changes based on the contract awarded in the Result notice.

• Completion

After a contract has ended, buyers can use Contract Completion notices to report on the details of the contract execution, such as the amount that was spent.

Buyers can update the information in all types of forms through change notices. A new version of the notice will be published, consolidating the information, with a description of the change, such as the extension of a deadline for a Competition notice.

It is not possible to update all information through a change notice. For instance, it is not possible for a change notice to make significant changes such as adding or removing lots.

The form types are further categorised into 46 subtypes of notices based on the four main public procurement directives:

• General public contracts for works, supplies and services (Directive 2014/24/EU)
• Procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors (Directive 2014/25/EU)
• Concessions (Directive 2014/23/EU)
• Procurement in the fields of defence and security (Directive 2009/81/EC)

Some subtypes allow for the publication of voluntary notices that are not subject to these directives, such as pre-market consultations, contract completions and procedures falling below the EU thresholds.

The annex of the eForms Regulation lists the 46 subtypes and how the business terms are used in each subtype. This Excel version of the annex can make it easier to understand the information but it has no legal validity itself.

Overview of form types, notice types and notice subtypes:

The eForms SDK

The eForms Regulation introduces numerous requirements for the data that public procurement notices using the eForms standard should collect and publish (the “eForms specifications”).

The eForms SDK is how the Publications Office of the European Union has modelled and formalised these eForms specifications. “SDK” stands for Software Development Kit and is a means of encoding and distributing the eForms specifications in a machine-readable format so that they can be directly used by computer applications.

The SDK is used by the Publications Office’s own systems, the eSenders who submit notices for publication on TED and by other organisations who need to work with eForms notices, such as TED data reusers.

The purpose of the SDK is to allow computer applications to create and encode notices that adhere to the latest eForms specifications on the one hand and to read and interpret notices that were created in the past (and thus adhere to a regulatory framework that may have changed since their creation) on the other hand.

Based on the continuous evolution of the regulatory framework around European public procurement, the eForms specifications are regularly adjusted. To cater to this ever-evolving nature of the eForms specifications, the SDK is updated regularly through releases of new versions or patches.

Although not formally subject to the eForms Regulation, the SDK also includes the forms required by Regulation 1370/2007 (public passenger transport services), Regulations 2157/2001, 1435/2003 and 2137/85 (for business registrations) and the EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 (for calls for expression of interest).

Further resources

• The evolution of eForms is governed by the European Commission and EU Member States, including the Expert Group on eProcurement.
• More information about the eForms SDK can be found on TED Developer Docs and GitHub.