The reform of pub­lic pro­cure­ment law in Sax­ony-Anhalt: Review of our online infor­ma­tion event on the new TVergG LSA

On Decem­ber 15, 2025, we held a free online infor­ma­tion event to take a clos­er look at the changes to the Sax­ony-Anhalt Col­lec­tive Bar­gain­ing and Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act (TVergG LSA). Our lawyer Josephine Buch­holz led the sem­i­nar and gave a pre­sen­ta­tion to shed light on the maze of new sec­tions.

We have made the full record­ing avail­able for you on our YouTube chan­nel.

What has changed at the core?

The reform has one main aim: less bureau­cra­cy and more speed in award­ing con­tracts in Sax­ony-Anhalt. In the sem­i­nar, lawyer Josephine Buch­holz explained the most impor­tant dif­fer­ences to the old legal sit­u­a­tion in a prac­ti­cal way.

1 Who is affect­ed? The scope of appli­ca­tion (§ 1) The TVergG LSA now focus­es entire­ly on sub-thresh­old awards. The pre­vi­ous prac­tice of apply­ing state reg­u­la­tions in addi­tion to EU-wide pro­ce­dures has been removed. The new 80/20 rule for lot awards is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing for con­tract­ing author­i­ties: The state pro­cure­ment law no longer has to be applied to small lots that togeth­er do not account for more than 20% of the total val­ue. In addi­tion, free­lance ser­vices, such as those pro­vid­ed by archi­tects or lawyers, are now express­ly exclud­ed from the law; the UVgO pri­mar­i­ly applies here. The lan­guage has also been mod­ern­ized: instead of “direct award”, we now speak uni­form­ly of “direct con­tract”.

2. more lee­way: the new best bid­der prin­ci­ple (Sec­tion 8) The best bid­der prin­ci­ple used to be a rigid oblig­a­tion. Now, con­tract­ing author­i­ties have real dis­cre­tion. They can decide for them­selves whether and which evi­dence they require from the poten­tial win­ner (the best bid­der) after the eval­u­a­tion. To save time, you can now even request doc­u­ments from the sec­ond or third-placed bid­ders in par­al­lel. The dead­lines have been made more flex­i­ble and now range from three to ten cal­en­dar days. A big plus point: if a bid­der miss­es the dead­line, this no longer auto­mat­i­cal­ly leads to ejec­tion. The client can decide whether to leave the bid in the run­ning any­way — but this must then be well doc­u­ment­ed.

3. com­pli­ance with col­lec­tive agree­ments and the new min­i­mum wage (§ 11) The rules on com­pli­ance with col­lec­tive agree­ments now only apply to con­struc­tion and ser­vices as well as local trans­port. Deliv­ery ser­vices are exclud­ed, as they have less influ­ence on local work­ing con­di­tions. Impor­tant for cost­ing: The min­i­mum wage spe­cif­ic to pro­cure­ment is cur­rent­ly EUR 15.67 (as of Sep­tem­ber 2025). What is new is that con­tract­ing author­i­ties must spec­i­fy the rel­e­vant col­lec­tive agree­ment in the ten­der doc­u­ments to ensure clar­i­ty for all bid­ders.

4. lean­er con­trols and dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion (§§ 14, 17) We are becom­ing more dig­i­tal: sub­con­trac­tors can now also be offi­cial­ly named elec­tron­i­cal­ly. The leg­is­la­tor has cut back on checks. Clients must now only be able to check the remu­ner­a­tion state­ments of the main con­trac­tor. The time-con­sum­ing check­ing of sub­con­trac­tors’ con­tracts for work and ser­vices or tax cer­tifi­cates is no longer nec­es­sary, which can mas­sive­ly reduce the admin­is­tra­tive bur­den.

5. the grad­u­at­ed sanc­tion sys­tem (§ 18) Vio­la­tions of the law are now pun­ished accord­ing to a grad­u­at­ed mod­el. This ranges from a warn­ing for minor errors (1%) to con­tract ter­mi­na­tion or sus­pen­sion for seri­ous breach­es of the main oblig­a­tions (5%).

6. faster pro­ce­dures thanks to new dead­lines (§ 19) All dead­lines have been changed from work­ing days to cal­en­dar days. This makes the cal­cu­la­tion eas­i­er, but also short­ens the time win­dows. The wait­ing peri­od before the con­tract is award­ed is now only sev­en cal­en­dar days. This means that projects can start more quick­ly, but bid­ders must also react more quick­ly in the event of errors.

Con­clu­sion: Those who write, stay

The reform brings a lot of flex­i­bil­i­ty and less paper­work. But be care­ful: “More dis­cre­tion” also means “more oblig­a­tion to give rea­sons”. Every deci­sion to waive an exclu­sion or penal­ty, for exam­ple, must be clear­ly jus­ti­fied in the award notice.