The overall objective of the service is to identify more efficient and targeted support mechanisms and actions to catalyse SME participation in public procurement. The results will contribute directly to policy making as well as additional and more effective tools and channels for the European Commission to better communicate market opportunities as well as the measures already taken and now in place to facilitate SME participation in public procurement.
This project will serve as a pilot for potentially more extensive work around the same issue in the coming years. For this reason, it focuses on Member States that have below or close to the EU average for SME participation in public procurement, either in total value or the number of contracts.

More specifically, the project contributes to:

• boosting the Commission’s understanding of SME needs related to participation in public procurement to a much more granular level,

• identifying the best ways of communicating with SMEs,

• developing key messages, along with the narratives, creative concepts and potential calls to action based on the previous two steps, for the Commission to use to encourage SMEs to participate in public procurement.

The project is divided in 2 work packages (WP), the first one consisting of the needs analysis and the identification of the best channels to reach SMEs, and the second one for the development of the key messages, along with the narratives, creative concepts and potential calls for action, to be used in the future Commission activities, tailored to the specificities of the different subcategories of the target group.

The final report of the study is available here.