VgV — Vergabeverordnung
also: VgV · German public procurement ordinance
The Vergabeverordnung (VgV) governs the award of public supply and service contracts above the EU thresholds in Germany. It gives effect to Part 4 of the GWB (the German act against restraints of competition, which contains the procurement law) and transposes Directive 2014/24/EU; separate sections apply to the liberal professions and to architectural and engineering services. Below the thresholds it does not apply — the UVgO and state law take over there.
3,591 open procedures state the VgV as their procedural basis, and 316 the SektVO, which covers the utilities sector.
What it means for a bidder
For bidders the VgV is the source of the formalities above the thresholds: mandatory electronic communication, the minimum time limits, the right to submit the European Single Procurement Document instead of individual certificates, the rules on relying on the capacities of other entities, and the contracting authority's duty to publish selection and award criteria together with their weighting in advance.
Architectural and engineering services have their own section: they are awarded through a negotiated procedure with a prior call for competition or through a design contest, and price may not be the sole award criterion. Design firms therefore compete on references and on the qualifications of the named team, not on fees.
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