Chapter 5 in EU Enlargement Policy: The Europeanisation of Public Procurement

As the European Union pivots toward a goal-oriented industrial policy, Strategic Public Procurement (SPP) has emerged as a leading demand-side tool. This paper investigates whether this “strategic turn” is being effectively exported to the EU’s neighbourhood through its enlargement policy, by comparing the Western Balkans (WB6) and the Eastern Trio. The research asks: is the EU preparing future members for a strategic marketplace, or is its external governance creating a “two-tier” Europe where the periphery remains bound by price-only competition? Utilising a mixed methods research design, I first analyse the Stabilisation and Association Agreements (SAAs) between EU-WB6 and the Association Agreement (AA) with its integrated Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (AA/DCFTAs) between EU and each country of the Eastern Trio, to identify the legal foundations for norm diffusion. Second, I replicate the SProcure dataset logic, which captures strategic goals across public procurement regulation (https://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/polwiss/forschung/projekte/sprocure/index.html), to map the longitudinal evolution of SPP in national legislation for the period 2014-2025, for the 9 countries. Finally, I triangulate these findings with European Commission Country Reports to evaluate how strategic procurement is linked to enlargement progress. The findings contribute to political science debates on europeanisation and the external dimension of the Single Market, thus disentangling the process of transposing complex, second-generation governance norms.