Quality criteria in EU tenders: how quality is scored

Evaluation & award · This guide was generated with the help of an AI system. Its legal references were checked against the official EU texts listed under Sources on 9 October 2026. Next review due by 9 October 2027, or sooner if the law changes. EU rules only. Not legal advice.

Short answer. Where a contract is awarded on the best price-quality ratio, quality is scored against criteria the buyer must publish with their weighting (Article 67(5)). Those criteria have to be about this tender: what you’ll deliver and how. They can’t simply reward your company for being experienced. That question belongs to selection, a separate test of whether your company can do the job. The exception is the team you assign to the contract. Its qualifications and experience can be scored where they significantly affect performance (Article 67(2)(b)). Read the marking scheme as closely as the price formula. In a close tender, one mark on a small sub-criterion can decide the result.

EU law · Two different questions: can you do it, and how good is this bid?

A buyer asks two separate questions, and the Directive keeps them apart.

Selection requirements must be “related and proportionate to the subject-matter of the contract”, and the buyer may ask for “a sufficient level of experience demonstrated by suitable references from contracts performed in the past” (Article 58(1) and (4)). Contracts are then awarded on the award criteria, but only to a tender that meets the requirements of the documents and comes from a tenderer that isn’t excluded and meets the selection criteria (Article 56(1)). In open procedures, the buyer may look at the tenders before checking exclusion and selection. That check still has to happen before the award (Article 56(2)).

Why it matters for your points. In Lianakis (C‑532/06), the Court held that award criteria don’t include criteria “essentially linked to the evaluation of the tenderers’ ability to perform the contract”. The buyer there had scored the bidders’ experience, qualifications and means as award criteria, and the Court found those were about suitability (paragraphs 30–31). That case was decided under an older Directive (92/50/EEC). Directive 2014/24 still keeps the two stages apart (Articles 56(1), 58 and 67), with one express exception for staff.

The staff exception. Directive 2014/24 now says expressly that award criteria may include the “organisation, qualification and experience of staff assigned to performing the contract, where the quality of the staff assigned can have a significant impact on the level of performance of the contract” (Article 67(2)(b)). The Court had already accepted, for intellectual, training and consultancy services under Directive 2004/18, that a buyer could score the team put forward for the contract, its composition and its members’ experience and background (Ambisig, C‑601/13).

So the line falls between the company and the people. The firm’s track record is a selection matter (see selection criteria). The named team that will actually do the work can be an award criterion, if the documents say so. How the Court got there, and how to write a team section that earns points, is covered in when can experience earn points?.

EU law · What can be scored as quality

The best price-quality ratio is assessed on criteria “linked to the subject-matter of the public contract”. Article 67(2) gives examples:

• Quality: technical merit, aesthetic and functional characteristics, accessibility, design for all users, social, environmental and innovative characteristics, and trading and its conditions.
• Staff: the organisation, qualification and experience of the staff assigned, under the condition quoted above.
• Service and delivery: after-sales service, technical assistance, delivery conditions and period of completion.

The link to the subject-matter is wide. It covers the works, supplies or services “in any respect and at any stage of their life cycle”, including the specific process of production, provision or trading, even where that isn’t part of their material substance (Article 67(3)). Environmental criteria were accepted long before the 2014 Directive, provided they were linked to the subject-matter, published and non-discriminatory, and didn’t give the buyer unrestricted freedom of choice (Concordia Bus Finland, C‑513/99, bus emissions and noise). More recently, the Court accepted an award criterion for social services without accommodation that scored a tenderer’s commitment to raise its staff’s total payroll above the level of the applicable collective agreement (C‑210/24; see scoring higher wages).

The limits on what the buyer can do

• No free hand. Award criteria can’t give the buyer “an unrestricted freedom of choice”. They have to ensure effective competition and come with specifications that let the information in the tenders be effectively verified (Article 67(4)).
• Descriptive criteria need indications. Criteria such as a “project development design” or a “description of the manner of performance” are allowed, but only if they come with indications that let the buyer assess tenders specifically and objectively (Antea Polska, C‑54/21, ruling point 3).
• Weighting fixed in advance. The documents must state the relative weighting of each criterion, or a range, or, if weighting is objectively impossible, the order of importance (Article 67(5)). As a rule, weighting factors and sub-criteria can’t be stipulated at a later date (Lianakis, ruling).
• One narrow exception. Weightings for sub-criteria fixed after the deadline are acceptable only if they don’t change the criteria, contain nothing that would have affected how tenders were prepared, and don’t discriminate (TNS Dimarso, C‑6/15). What Dimarso means for unpublished formulas is covered in must the buyer publish its scoring formula?.
• Minimum quality scores are allowed. The documents may set a threshold that excludes tenders before price is scored, whatever the number of tenders left (Montte, C‑546/16, an open procedure).

National law · Where your country may add rules

Member States may ban or limit price-only awards (Article 67(2)). National rules or standard documents can also set requirements of their own, for example on marking scales. Check the rules of the country where the contract is awarded and, above all, the documents themselves.

Our analysis · One mark on a 10% sub-criterion

Go back to the three bids in how your price becomes points: quality worth 60 points, price 40, proportional price formula. Bidder A won with 87.20 against B’s 87.00. Suppose A’s 52 quality points came from this marking scheme:

Each mark is worth weight ÷ 10 points: 3 on methodology, 2 on the team, 1 on environmental measures.

Now suppose the evaluators read A’s environmental section as a 6 rather than a 7. A drops to 86.20 and B wins with 87.00. One mark, on the smallest sub-criterion, moved the contract. Losing one mark on the team would have cost twice as much.

Turn it round. To gain one more mark on environmental measures by cutting price instead, A would need to bring its price from €1,000,000 to about €972,376 under the proportional formula, a cut of roughly €27,600. The scoring calculator works this out for your own bid as the euro value of one quality point. Then compare it with what the extra mark would cost you to earn.

The figures are invented. The pattern isn’t: sub-criteria with small weights still decide close tenders, and a scale that moves in whole marks makes each mark a step, not a slope.

Practice · Writing to the marking scheme

1. Map the scheme before you write. List every criterion and sub-criterion with its weight, the marking scale and any descriptors that define each band. Give each a section of your response, in the same order and under the same headings. Evaluators score against the scheme, not against your structure.
2. Answer the descriptor, not just the question. If the top band of a (made-up) scheme reads “demonstrates, with evidence, how risks will be managed”, make sure there is evidence and that it’s about risk. A strong general answer can still land in a middle band.
3. Keep selection material out of award answers, unless asked. Company references and turnover belong to selection. In an award answer, write about this contract: how you’ll deliver it, with which people, on which terms.
4. Name the team when the team is scored. If the documents score the staff assigned, give named people, their roles on this contract and the relevant experience of each. Check what the documents say about replacing them later.
5. Only promise what you can deliver. Check whether the documents make your quality commitments part of the contract, and assume they will be checked during performance. Make sure the costs of your promises are in your price.
6. Ask when the scheme is unclear. If a criterion has no descriptors, or two sub-criteria seem to overlap, ask the buyer in good time. Under Article 53(2) the answer goes to every tenderer, at the latest six days before the deadline (four in an accelerated procedure).
7. Watch the minimum. If there’s a minimum quality score, a tender below it never reaches price scoring, however cheap it is.

Practice · After the decision

If you lose on quality, the scores per criterion are the most useful thing you can ask for. If your tender was admissible, the buyer must tell you, on written request, the characteristics and relative advantages of the winning tender (Article 55(2)). Ask for your marks and the winner’s marks per sub-criterion, and check them against the scheme that was published. See after the award decision for the deadlines.

What this page doesn’t cover

Life-cycle costing (Article 68). Design contests. How buyers organise evaluation panels. Utilities contracts under Directive 2014/25/EU. National marking rules, except as mentioned. If a scoring decision matters to you, a procurement lawyer in the country concerned can advise on the national review rules.