EU Procurement Standards Show Vendor Lock-In Is Growing B2B Liability

Government tech procurement has mostly come down to price, performance and who could land the contract fastest. The EU just signaled that era is ending.

With its new Tech Sovereignty Package unveiled on Tuesday (June 2), the European Commission is repositioning procurement as an instrument of economic strategy and digital resilience rather than a purely administrative purchasing function. The initiative places digital sovereignty, interoperability, cybersecurity, open standards, and vendor independence at the center of government technology buying decisions. And it signals a shift with implications extending far beyond European public agencies to enterprises both across the continent and outside of it.

At one level, the package reflects Europe’s long-running concerns about dependence on a concentrated group of foreign technology providers, particularly in cloud infrastructure, enterprise software, and AI services. But the broader significance is structural. Procurement standards established in government markets often migrate into enterprise buying behavior, shaping the language of RFPs, compliance expectations, and technology architecture decisions across industries.

For B2B technology vendors, cloud providers, systems integrators, payments firms, and procurement leaders, the message from the EU is clear: Future competitiveness may depend less on simply delivering functionality and more on demonstrating resilience, transparency, portability and strategic alignment.

Read more: B2B Procurement’s Future Belongs to Companies That See Risk First

Interoperability Is Key

One of the clearest signals in the EU initiative is the emphasis on interoperability and open-source adoption within public administrations. That does not mean Europe is abandoning commercial software, but it does indicate a growing preference for architectures that reduce switching costs and minimize dependence on a single vendor.

As a result, support for open APIs, interoperable architectures, and portable data is evolving from a developer talking point into a procurement differentiator.

Public sector buyers, and many enterprise procurement leaders alongside them, are coming to view excessive lock-in as a form of vulnerability. This is especially relevant in cloud computing and SaaS markets, where organizations are reassessing concentration risk. Multi-cloud strategies, portable workloads, and standards-based integrations are no longer merely technical preferences; they are becoming governance priorities.

The implications extend well beyond traditional infrastructure providers. Payments companies, FinTech platforms, and B2B commerce networks sit inside critical systems that process sensitive financial and transactional data. As procurement standards evolve, these firms may face heightened scrutiny around data governance, interoperability and resilience.

For example, public sector and enterprise buyers may expect payment providers to demonstrate portability between cloud environments, clear jurisdictional controls over transaction data, and transparent relationships with underlying infrastructure providers.

Embedded finance could face similar pressure. Many B2B platforms now integrate payments, identity verification, lending, procurement automation and workflow management into unified environments. While those integrated experiences create efficiency, they can also intensify dependency concerns if customers struggle to migrate data or switch providers.

Read more: How AI Killed Information Asymmetry in B2B Procurement

Transparency Is Mandatory

The EU’s procurement framework also reinforces another accelerating trend: Supply chain visibility is becoming foundational. Buyers expect detailed insight into how software is built, hosted, secured and maintained. Questions around subcontractors, software dependencies, hosting jurisdictions and third-party risk exposure are moving closer to the center of procurement evaluations.

In future procurement environments, security and transparency may carry weight comparable to product innovation. For B2B technology firms, this means documentation and governance capabilities are becoming necessities rather than optional compliance exercises. Vendors capable of framing their offerings around operational continuity, compliance, transparency and risk reduction may gain an advantage as trust itself becomes measurable.

Despite the significance of the EU’s move, companies should avoid overinterpreting the signal. The commission is not declaring the end of commercial software dominance, nor is it excluding non-European vendors from public procurement markets. Price and performance will continue to matter, and existing enterprise contracts are unlikely to disappear overnight.

The lesson is not simply “be open source” or “be European.” It is that procurement criteria are broadening beyond functionality and cost optimization into questions of resilience, governance, portability, and long-term risk management.

What buyers want is strategic control. They want visibility into dependencies, flexibility in how systems evolve, and assurances that critical infrastructure can remain resilient amid geopolitical or cybersecurity disruptions. And, above all, they want to work with the firms that can give it to them.