New Public Procurement Certification System in Poland Favors AI-Equipped Firms

A new certification system for public procurement contractors has launched in Poland, aiming to replace repetitive, paper-based proof of a company's reliability in every subsequent tender with a single, reusable confirmation. Public procurement experts, however, point out that the real advantage will go to companies that simultaneously deploy artificial intelligence tools to analyze tender notices and documentation.

The new certificate is meant to work like a passport to tenders. A company that passes verification once, covering experience, financial standing, absence of grounds for exclusion, and organizational capacity, will be able to cite that document in later proceedings instead of assembling the same certificates and declarations from scratch every time.

New rules from July 12

The reform covers several pillars at once: alongside the contractor certification system, Poland introduced a Central Contract Register (Centralny Rejestr Umów), raised the threshold for applying the Public Procurement Law (Prawo zamówień publicznych), and reformed the National Appeals Chamber (Krajowa Izba Odwoławcza), the body that hears disputes between contracting authorities and contractors. The changes are meant to make it easier for companies that previously avoided tenders due to the scale of paperwork to get started.

The data shows how large the problem the new rules aim to solve really is. As many as 7 in 10 Polish businesses have never submitted a bid in any public tender, and in 2025 alone only 13 percent of companies attempted to do so, even though the public procurement market is worth around 587 billion zloty a year and is projected to grow to nearly one trillion zloty by 2029.

Role of artificial intelligence

Experts stress that certification alone will not be enough unless a company also automates the process of searching for and evaluating tender notices. The number of tenders published daily in Poland is now so large that manually reviewing all of them for realistic chances of winning has become practically impossible for smaller firms.

The advantage will go not to the companies that read more notices, but to those that can tell a real opportunity apart faster - Wiktor Gaweł, CEO of the Minerwa platform

One example cited as a practical application of AI in this area is the Poznań-based platform Minerwa, which automates the analysis of tender notices and documentation. According to estimates cited in industry analyses, AI-based systems can speed up document analysis by as much as ninefold, while cutting companies' administrative burden by up to 90 percent.

The math for small businesses

Not all public procurement lawyers view the reform uncritically. Attorney Michał Liżewski of the law firm LEGALLY.SMART points out that certification could prove to be a double-edged sword, especially for smaller entities.

Certification can become a real tool for companies to build competitive advantage in the public procurement market - Michał Liżewski, LEGALLY.SMART law firm

The same expert also warns that for small and medium-sized enterprises, the new regulations could mean additional costs and the need to reorganize internal processes before the certificate starts delivering real benefits. Preparing documentation for certification, deploying AI tools to monitor tender notices, and training staff are expenses smaller companies must bear upfront, with no guarantee of a quick return.

What's next

For Polish IT companies and public administration service providers, the reform opens a real opportunity to enter a market segment that had previously been practically inaccessible to them due to the scale of paperwork involved. At the same time, it creates a new barrier to entry based not on capital but on technological readiness: companies that fail to invest in automating tender analysis risk remaining stuck in the same niche as before, despite the formal simplification of procedures.

The effectiveness of the new certification system will only become clear after several months of operation, once the first data emerges on the number of certificates issued and on whether the number of small and medium-sized companies taking part in tenders has actually increased. Until then, the market for AI tools supporting participation in public procurement will likely keep growing alongside the reform itself.