Riflessioni sul futuro della disciplina europea dei settori speciali a margine del documento del Parlamento europeo sulle prossime direttive

Abstract

This article examines the ongoing reform of the European Union public procurement directives with specific regard to the utilities sectors. Moving from the Parliament resolution of 9 September 2025, the Commission evaluation, the coherence studies, the public consultations and the main institutional and sectoral position papers, the article argues that the reform no longer concerns only simplification or procedural efficiency. It rather reveals a deeper transformation of EU public procurement law: from a legal framework primarily designed to open national markets and protect competition into an instrument increasingly expected to support industrial policy, strategic autonomy, security of supply and economic resilience. The analysis focuses on three emerging but still legally unsettled principles - Buy European, Made in Europe and Buy Local - and on their particular relevance for the utilities sectors, where market openness, critical infrastructures and strategic supply chains overlap. It then examines the contested scope of Directive 2014/25/EU, the exemption mechanism for activities exposed to competition, and the debate on public-public cooperation and in-house providing. The article concludes that utilities are not merely one sector among others, but the main laboratory - and possibly the main stress test - of the forthcoming reform, since they are simultaneously the most industrially exposed, the most dependent on global supply chains and the most affected by the Union’s new strategic ambitions.