eForms
also: eForms · EU standard forms
eForms are the EU standard forms for procurement notices, mandatory since 25 October 2023, which replaced the earlier standard forms. They are structured and largely coded: procedure type, selection criteria, time limits, contract data and award details are carried as language-independent codes rather than free text. Their legal basis is Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1780; member states may extend the forms nationally but may not drop the mandatory fields.
50,950 notices in our corpus carry structured selection criteria thanks to eForms — readable without translation, the same codes in every language.
What it means for a bidder
The practical effect for bidders is larger than the technical occasion suggests. Because requirements arrive as codes, a foreign notice can be checked against your own company by machine — whether a minimum turnover, a professional register entry, a management-system certificate or references of a particular kind are demanded — before anyone translates a word. What stays uncoded is the description of the work itself; it remains in the national language and in the procurement documents.
Note that the code carries the kind of requirement, not its level: that a minimum annual turnover is required is coded, while how high it is sits in the buyer's free text. Any automated reasoning over eForms must respect that boundary — otherwise it produces a "requirement met" that nobody has actually checked.
Related terms
DEFINITION · a description of the law with a citation, not legal advice · FIGURE · from nightly-built aggregates of our own corpus · all terms: friedrich-clement.com/en/glossar