Belgian Competition Authority opens consultation on draft guidance for competition in public procurement
On 5 January 2026, the Belgian Competition Authority (BCA) launched a public consultation on its draft guidance designed to help public buyers identify and mitigate competition risks throughout the full process of public procurement. In particular, the draft guidance aims at preventing and detecting bid rigging (i.e. collusion between bidders in public contracts) and other anticompetitive practices. The draft guidance also provides recommendations and best practices to prevent such conduct.
The initiative builds on and updates the BCA’s 2017 guide for contracting authorities, reflecting legal, market and policy developments since its original publication. The 2017 guide already highlighted the high cost of bid rigging and collusion for contracting authorities, highlighted the main signals that may indicate bid rigging and provided examples of measures that can be implemented to prevent collusion.
The new draft updates best practices to reflect current market realities and sets out recommendations to raise awareness and strengthen cooperation between public buyers and the BCA, with the aim of safeguarding effective, fair and innovation‑friendly public procurement.
Positioning public buyers as first‑line actors, the BCA relies on their key role to detect, early on, unusual bidding patterns and other red flags that suggest anticompetitive practices. The new draft guidance encourages early, even informal, engagement with the BCA where concerns arise, and sets out a structured approach to responding to suspected anticompetitive practices, including contacts with the BCA, preservation of evidence and internal reporting.
Substantively, the new draft guidance goes beyond a checklist of “red flags” to cover upstream stages, notably the planning and design of contracts, where the ability to preserve competition often comes into play. It also addresses the choice of procedure and the balance between transparency and confidentiality, noting that excessive transparency in concentrated markets can inadvertently facilitate coordination of competitors.
On vigilance during tendering, the draft details indicators of concerted practices, including recurrent rotations of winners, coordinated non‑submissions or withdrawals, identical pricing structures and suspiciously similar documents. It also provides for practical measures to be implemented, such as anti‑cartel clauses in tender documents, separate site visits and the use of anonymous Q&A channels. It further warns that joint bidding may raise competition issues where participants could have bid independently.
The consultation’s objective is to ensure the draft guidance meets stakeholder expectations, fills gaps identified by practitioners and clarifies complex intersections between procurement and competition rules. Contributions received will support the refinement and finalisation of the guidance.
The consultation is open until 28 February 2026.
