The Constitutional Court struck down the Public-Popular Associations of the National Development Plan

Judgment C-033/26 | February 25, 2026

On Tuesday, February 25, the Constitutional Court put an end to one of the most ambitious—and most controversial—contracting experiments of the Petro administration: the Public-Popular Partnerships and the Public-Popular Initiative Partnerships, created under Articles 100 and 101 of the National Development Plan Law. The full court declared them unconstitutional in their entirety.

The decision comes as no surprise to those who have been following the debate. Since the enactment of Law 2294 of 2023, several sectors of administrative law have warned that these figures were treading on thin ice: they were attempting to modify the state contracting regime through a law that, by its very nature, is not the appropriate instrument for doing so.

What the rules said

Article 100 opened the door for state entities to contract directly —without

The bidding process, without competition, was open to individuals or non-profit entities from the so-called "popular and community economy." The scope of the projects could be broad: infrastructure works, rural housing, tertiary roads, food production, water management, among others. The limit was the minimum amount.

Article 101 went further. It created its own contractual instrument—Public-Popular Initiative Associations—for projects up to 6,000 minimum wages, with a system that expressly departed from the General Contracting Statute and left the government's regulations to complete what the law did not regulate.

Why the Court overturned them

The underlying problem is singular, although it manifested itself differently in each article: Congress has a constitutional obligation—established in the final paragraph of Article 150 of the Constitution—to regulate public procurement itself. It cannot delegate this task to the government through regulations, nor can it do so half-heartedly, leaving essential elements undefined.

With regard to Article 100, the Court indicated that creating a new ground for direct contracting without specifying exactly who the beneficiaries are is insufficient. The concept of "popular economy" was never defined in the regulation with the level of specificity required for authorization to contract without competition. This is not a minor flaw: it is the heart of the article, and without that definition, the regulation could not stand.

With Article 101, the problem was even more evident. The rule itself stated that Public-Popular Initiative Associations would be governed “exclusively” by its provisions and regulations. In other words, the Contracting Statute—a law passed by Congress—was disregarded, and the government filled the gaps. For the Court, this reverses the constitutional order.

The Court did dismiss the charge based on the unity of subject matter. It considered that both provisions were indeed related to the objectives of the National Development Plan, so that argument did not succeed.

The dissenting voices

The decision was not unanimous. Justices Héctor Alfonso Carvajal Londoño and Juan Carlos Cortés González dissented. Cortés González argued that the law did provide sufficient elements to identify the beneficiaries and that the system of capacities and contractual requirements could be integrated with the rest of the existing legal framework. His position was that only some expressions in Article 101 were truly problematic due to their vagueness, not the entire provision.

On the other hand, Justices Paola Andrea Meneses Mosquera and Jorge Enrique Ibáñez Najar issued clarifications of their votes. They agreed with the ruling of unconstitutionality, but went further: in their view, these provisions also failed the test of unity of subject matter, because they were not tools for implementing the plan but rather structural reforms to the contracting system that should have been processed through ordinary legislative channels. In the words of Justice Ibáñez Najar, admitting that a generic connection to “strengthening the popular economy” is sufficient to include anything in a law of the plan renders that constitutional review meaningless.

What's next?

These legal structures are eliminated from the legal framework with immediate effect. Public entities that have initiated contractual processes under these modalities—or that were in the preliminary stages of structuring—must carefully review their situation. It is not automatic that all actions taken will be nullified, but it is necessary to evaluate, on a case-by-case basis, the resulting legal consequences.

For the government, the ruling closes this door but not necessarily the underlying debate. If it wants to create special contractual mechanisms for the informal economy, it will have to do so through the process mandated by the Constitution: an ordinary law, passed in Congress, with all the essential elements defined within the legal text.

Download the Constitutional Court's statement here

Comunicado-08-Febrero-25-de-2026.pdf

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If you have contracts or processes that may be affected by this decision, please contact us.