SEC/260994 - Provision of services related to social and behavioural studies

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) invites tenders for a single framework service contract (ECDC/2026/OP/0014) to provide social and behavioural research including representative online survey fieldwork, data management and analysis, qualitative research and rapid ad-hoc studies across EU/EEA and selected partner countries. The framework has an estimated ceiling of €2.5 million, initial duration 24 months renewable up to 48 months, and will be awarded on a best price-quality ratio with quality weighted 70% and price 30%. Tenders must be submitted electronically via the EU Funding & Tenders Portal (EU Login and PIC required) by 16 December 2026 at 16:00 Europe/Stockholm and must complete the technical submission and Annex 6 financial template.

Who can apply

Eligible suppliers

Service providers (single entities or consortia) offering survey panels representative of adult populations in EU/EEA countries, with proven experience in quantitative and qualitative social and behavioural research related to infectious diseases and capacity to operate under expedited timelines during public health emergencies.

Opportunity summary

What is being procured

ECDC seeks a single service provider to be awarded a framework service contract to deliver social and behavioural research services across four work packages (WPs). The contractor will be called on via specific contracts/order forms under the FWC to deliver any combination of WPs. Services will primarily support infectious disease public health research and communications across EU/EEA countries and may extend to candidate, neighbourhood and other partner countries. The FWC may also be used by ECCC and DG COMM for related activities.

Key deliverables and timelines (typical)

Technical requirements and standards

Geographic and population scope

Procurement model, award and contract

Eligibility and required applicant types

How to apply and practical requirements

Evaluation, award and payment summary

Templates and submission documents (what to include)

Administrative & selection checkpoints

Categorization answers (detailed)

Eligible Applicant Types:

Legal entities and natural persons able to perform the services: consultancies, market research agencies, survey platform operators, academic institutions, research institutes, NGOs, NGOs with survey capacity, SMEs, large enterprises. Joint tenders (consortia) are permitted; subcontractors and third-party resources may be used. Public bodies may participate where national rules allow. The tender documents specify which involved entities must provide declarations and supporting evidence.

Funding Type:

This is a procurement / tender — framework service contract (not a grant or loan). The financial mechanism is a service contract procured by public contract award.

Consortium Requirement:

Single contractor required for the FWC award (the FWC is concluded with one contractor). Tenderers may be a sole economic operator or a group (joint tender). If a joint tender without separate legal personality is submitted, members must nominate a group leader and accept joint and several liability.

Beneficiary Scope (Geographic Eligibility):

Eligible applicants may be established in Union Member States, EEA, and countries covered by procurement access rules indicated in Section 2.2 of the tender specifications (EEA and Stabilisation and Association Agreement Parties). The work will cover EU/EEA countries and may extend to candidate and neighbourhood countries, the UK, Switzerland and other partner countries on an ad-hoc basis.

Target Sector:

Social and behavioural sciences applied to public health and infectious disease; population surveys and survey methodology; qualitative social research; public health communication; cybersecurity awareness (for ECCC uses); communication research (for DG COMM). Primary sectors: health, social/behavioural research, ICT (survey platforms), communication.

Mentioned Countries:

All EU/EEA Member States listed in Group I of the tender specifications (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden), plus candidate and partner countries listed in Group II (Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Türkiye, Ukraine) and UK and Switzerland; Group III other countries on request.

Project Stage:

Expected project maturities served: survey fieldwork and data collection (operational), data cleaning and analysis (validation/analysis), qualitative research (data collection, analysis), reporting and dissemination (publication). The contract covers research implementation, analysis, and reporting rather than fundamental idea-stage research. Suitable for operational research and evidence generation (validation, demonstration, deployment).

Funding Amount:

FWC estimated overall ceiling: €2,500,000. Specific contract/order values will be set per request; Annex 6 contains a reference evaluation scenario and unit price templates for WP1–WP4, complementary deliverables and daily rates.

Application Type:

Open call for tenders (public procurement). Electronic submission only (eSubmission on the Funding & Tenders Portal). No invitations required to view the procurement documents, but EU Login/PIC required to participate.

Nature of Support:

Contractors will receive financial remuneration under a service contract (money). Non-monetary support includes access to ECDC REDCap where ECDC hosts surveys (as agreed) and scientific collaboration/clearance processes; but the primary modality is paid services.

Application Stages:

Single-stage tender submission (1). Evaluation follows administrative, exclusion, selection checks and then award scoring. After award, specific contracts/orders are issued and may require additional project-level negotiation/clarification.

Success Rates:

Not published in procurement notice; success rates depend on number of tenderers. No historical success rate is provided in the documentation.

Co-funding Requirement:

No co-funding from the contractor is required; this is a procurement where the contracting authority pays for services. The contractor must quote all prices net of VAT (ECDC is exempt from VAT).

Templates: what the application forms look like and structure guidance

Assessment of technical and scientific expectations

Summary: What is this opportunity about and how to explain it

This tender is a public procurement by ECDC to award a single framework contract to a service provider capable of delivering comprehensive social and behavioural research services across Europe and partner countries. The contractor will supply, on demand, multilingual online survey fieldwork via representative survey panels, data management and reproducible analysis (R scripts), targeted qualitative research (interviews and focus groups), and rapid ad-hoc studies required during public health emergencies. The FWC covers translation, recruitment, programming, monitoring, QA, weighting and secure transfer of anonymized data, analysis, reporting and optional scientific manuscript support. The contract is procured via an open procedure, with award on the basis of best price-quality ratio. Interested providers must submit an electronic tender via the Funding & Tenders Portal, complete the technical and financial templates (Annex 6) and satisfy exclusion and selection criteria (company standing, turnover threshold, examples of comparable work, panel access evidence, qualified team). The FWC ceiling is €2.5 million and the contract term is up to 48 months.

For full procedural, legal, and technical requirements consult the official procurement package on the Funding & Tenders Portal. The Annex 6 financial template must be completed exactly as provided and uploaded both in native Excel and PDF forms.

Footnotes

1. 1All official procurement documents, templates and Q&A (Invitation to tender, Tender specifications, Draft Service FWC, Financial proposal form with scenario) are published on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal at the tender details page: ec.europa.eu

Opportunity classification

This is a public procurement tender issued by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, not a grant or funding scheme. ECDC intends to establish a service framework contract for social and behavioural research supporting infectious disease preparedness, response and public health decision making.

The official opportunity is available on the EU Funding and Tenders Portal.

Key opportunity facts

Purpose and expected outcomes

ECDC is seeking a provider capable of delivering representative online survey research and qualitative research across EU and EEA countries, with additional capacity for selected neighbouring, candidate and other countries where requested. The supplier must be able to support infectious disease related studies, provide reliable data management and analysis, and mobilise rapidly during public health emergencies.

The opportunity is particularly suitable for established market research agencies, social and behavioural research institutes, public health research organisations, polling companies and specialist consortia with extensive panel access and multilingual delivery capacity.

Work package scope

Who can apply

The tender is aimed at economic operators able to provide the complete range of services or to organise delivery through a consortium and permitted subcontractors. The collected notice does not state that applicants must be public bodies, universities or SMEs. The procurement data identifies the opportunity as not specifically reserved for SMEs.

A strong tenderer profile would normally include the following capabilities, subject to the formal selection criteria in the tender specifications:

The available portal extract does not reproduce all exclusion, selection, financial standing, technical capacity, professional qualification or subcontracting conditions. These must be checked in the tender specifications and invitation letter before deciding whether a sole tender or consortium submission is appropriate.

Geographical and sampling requirements

The pricing scenarios distinguish between EU and EEA Member States, smaller countries, candidate and potential candidate countries, European Neighbourhood Policy partner countries, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and other countries. The supplier must therefore be able to recruit respondents and conduct research across multiple national markets and languages.

The WP1 reference scenario uses completed response samples that vary by country category. Typical reference sizes include 1,000 general population respondents, 300 respondents for one specified subgroup and 250 for another subgroup in larger countries. Smaller countries and some special categories use lower reference samples. The financial form also allows oversampling uplifts of 20 percent, 25 percent or 30 percent where requested.

For rapid online surveys under WP4, the financial scenario uses unit pricing by question unit, country and population category. The scenario includes general population and subgroup samples and requires the tenderer to price monitoring reports, survey weights and data transfer.

Qualitative delivery requirements

The qualitative work packages cover several fieldwork methods. Online and face to face in depth interviews are priced per country, population category and group of 15 interviews, with each interview expected to last approximately 45 to 60 minutes. Focus group work is priced per four focus groups, with up to eight participants per group and sessions lasting approximately 60 minutes.

Expected qualitative outputs include translated interview guides, study protocols, recruitment and fieldwork, transcripts translated into English, codebooks, coded transcripts and final reports. The financial scenarios refer to five coded transcripts for in depth interviews or two coded transcripts for focus group discussions in certain deliverables.

Financial model and commercial conditions

The estimated overall contract value is €2.5 million. This is the estimated value of the framework procurement and should not be treated as a guaranteed award value, minimum purchase volume or grant allocation.

The financial offer form requires unit prices for specified deliverables across all four work packages. ECDC will use defined evaluation scenarios to compare tenders. The scenarios are expressly for financial evaluation and do not commit ECDC to ordering the stated volume of services.

Prices must be quoted free of duties, taxes and other charges, including VAT, because ECDC benefits from the applicable privileges and immunities of the European Union. Tenderers should price all required recruitment, quota management, translation, fieldwork, weighting, data transfer, analysis, quality assurance, reporting and other associated costs where the relevant deliverable requires them.

There is no funding rate, grant percentage, co financing requirement or reimbursement regime. Payment will be made for services ordered and accepted under specific contracts or orders issued within the framework, in accordance with the final contract terms.

Framework structure and call off risk

The framework is stated to operate without reopening of competition. This means that the framework terms and prices established through the procurement are intended to govern subsequent orders without a new competition between framework contractors. The exact ordering mechanism, ranking or allocation rules must be confirmed in the final framework contract.

Because the procurement is a framework agreement, successful appointment does not necessarily guarantee a particular number of assignments or the full €2.5 million value. Applicants should assess the commercial case on the basis of potential access to recurring ECDC work rather than guaranteed turnover.

Evaluation approach

The published procurement data indicates a best price quality ratio with quality weighted at 70 percent and price weighted at 30 percent. This makes methodological credibility, operational resilience, sampling quality, response speed and evidence of comparable public health research more important than offering the lowest price alone.

A competitive tender should demonstrate:

Duration and renewal

The framework is planned for an initial 24 month period and may be renewed two times, giving a maximum possible duration of 48 months. Renewal is not automatic and remains subject to the conditions of the draft framework contract and ECDC requirements.

Submission requirements and process

The portal guidance states that eSubmission attachments must generally be below 50 MB per file and that the system permits draft submissions to be edited until the deadline. Tenderers should nevertheless follow the procedure specific system requirements displayed for this procurement and should not rely on last minute uploading.

Documents available

Applicant preparation priorities

Overall assessment

This is a strategically relevant procurement for a research provider with broad European panel infrastructure, multilingual operations and strong public health expertise. The opportunity is more demanding than a conventional survey contract because it combines representative cross country sampling, qualitative research, reproducible analysis and rapid emergency response capacity.

The principal commercial opportunity is access to a potentially recurring four year ECDC research framework. The principal risks are the absence of guaranteed order volume, the breadth of geographic coverage, the need to price many detailed unit categories, the requirement for rapid mobilisation and the significant quality weighting in the evaluation.

The authoritative procurement page and its four official documents should be treated as controlling sources for eligibility, technical specifications, contractual obligations, final deadlines and any amendments. The portal record identifies the opportunity as open for electronic submission and gives the submission deadline as 16 December 2026 at 16:00 Europe/Stockholm.