MEPA and Consip — Italy's electronic marketplace and national central purchasing body

Two different things

Consip S.p.A. runs, for the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Programma per la razionalizzazione degli acquisti nella PA. It produces two families of instruments. The first is ready-to-use contracts — convenzioni and accordi quadro awarded through Consip's own tenders, from which administrations then place direct orders. The second is negotiation tools with which administrations run their own procedures: MePA, Sdapa and gare in ASP. Everything operates through the Acquisti in rete portal.

MEPA is the electronic marketplace, opened in 2003. Firms offer goods, services and works for amounts below the EU threshold; buyers order directly from a catalogue or issue a richiesta di offerta (RdO) to selected suppliers. Sdapa, the dynamic purchasing system, has existed since 2010 and covers amounts also above the EU threshold. Consip states that a single abilitazione covers both, with the supplier choosing the merchandise categories under which its offer is classified.

The scale is why this matters. Consip reports over 291,000 firms and 14,000 administrations meeting on the platform, negotiating 880,000 purchase contracts worth €31.9 billion in 2025, and more than 200,000 firms already abilitate to MePA and Sdapa. Its own programme indicators put purchases at €25.8 billion and available contracts at €15.9 billion as at November 2025.

When a buyer has to use them

The obligations sit outside the contracts code, in spending-containment legislation that the code expressly preserves.

Article 1(449) of legge 296/2006 requires state central and peripheral administrations — including schools, educational institutions and universities, national social security bodies and the fiscal agencies — to buy using the convenzioni-quadro. Other public administrations under article 1 of D.Lgs. 165/2001, and the independent authorities, may use them, or must use their price-quality parameters as maximum limits when they contract on their own. National health service bodies must use their regional central purchasing body's conventions, or Consip's where no regional convention is operative.

Article 1(450) requires state administrations (excluding schools and universities) and the same social security bodies and fiscal agencies to use the electronic marketplace for goods and services from €5,000 up to the EU threshold. Other public administrations and the independent authorities in that same band must use MEPA, another electronic marketplace established under the same provision, or the telematic system of their reference regional central purchasing body.

The code then folds these in. Article 62(1) lets every contracting authority buy supplies and services autonomously up to the direct-award thresholds and award works up to €500,000, but only "fermi restando gli obblighi di utilizzo di strumenti di acquisto e di negoziazione previsti dalle vigenti disposizioni in materia di contenimento della spesa" — the obligations above survive intact. Article 48(3) repeats the point for below-threshold contracts. Article 63(4) enrols Consip by right in ANAC's list of qualified contracting authorities.

For buyers that are not qualified, article 62(6) makes central purchasing bodies more or less unavoidable: they may use qualified central purchasing bodies' telematic negotiation tools autonomously for supplies and services below the EU threshold and for ordinary-maintenance works below €1 million, and may place orders on those bodies' instruments — with a first preference for their own region, and a reasoned freedom to go outside it where the item is unavailable, unsuitable or uneconomic.

What this means for a supplier

If you sell standardised goods or services in Italy, MEPA abilitazione is not a nice-to-have. A large share of below-threshold demand is legally routed through it, and it is the channel through which an RdO invitation can reach you at all.

Abilitazione can be requested at any time. The work is in the classification: you choose the merchandise categories under which your catalogue sits, and those categories determine which RdOs you can be invited to. Get them wrong and you are invisible to buyers who are searching by category.

Budget for stamp duty. On MEPA purchases, ANAC records the Revenue Agency's position: for an RdO the €16 imposta di bollo is owed only by the offeror whose offer is accepted, while in an open procedure it is owed by all participants and is not owed for a negotiated procedure or for expressing interest after a market survey. The buyer is required to check that it has been paid.

And keep the two routes separate in your plan. Winning a convenzione means winning a national Consip tender and then taking direct orders against it — high value, high barrier, long cycle. Being abilitato to MEPA means being findable and invitable for a very large number of small procedures. They are different sales motions and they need different bid resources.

Related terms

• Affidamento diretto and the sotto-soglia regime (Italy)
• Qualificazione delle stazioni appaltanti — qualification of contracting authorities (Italy)
• Codice dei contratti pubblici (D.Lgs. 36/2023) — Italy's public contracts code
• CIG — Codice Identificativo Gara (Italy)

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