Publication of Decree-Law no. 66/2025

On April 10, Decree-Law no. 66/2025 was published, which amends the Public Procurement Code (CCP), supplementing the transposition of Article 63, number 2, of Directive 2014/24/EU, which, while enshrining the possibility of contracting parties to resort to subcontracting, provides that contracting entities may require that certain critical tasks be performed by the contractor themselves.

With regard to the densification of this requirement provided for in Directive 2014/24/EU, the Court of Justice of the European Union has upheld the understanding that the definition of such a limit on subcontracting cannot be made by means of an abstract fixing of a maximum percentage of the contract price up to which it may occur.

In this line of understanding, Decree-Law no. 54/2023, of July 14, had already repealed numbers 2 and 3 of article 383 of the CCP, which provided for and regulated the maximum percentage limits within the scope of the subcontracting, fixed at 75% of the contract price.

However, this legal decree failed to adjust, accordingly, the wording of number 4 of article 318 of the CCP, in which the possibility remained that the contract prohibits the subcontracting of contractual services whose accumulated value exceeds a certain percentage of the contractual price.

Because of the misalignment of the wording of paragraph 4 of Article 318 of the CCP with the provisions of Directive 2014/24/EU, infringement proceedings are under way by the European Commission against Portugal, which intensified the urgent and urgent nature of the legislative amendment now carried out, in order to bring national legislation into line with European Union legislation.

Thus, paragraph 4 of article 318 of the CCP was replaced by the following wording: “The contract may require that certain critical contractual services, taking into account the object of the contract to be concluded, be executed directly by the contractor”.

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