Having the option to tender is rather different from being forced to, though. If it isn't broke, there should not be compulsion to "fix" it on purely ideological grounds.
France is quite a good example in this regard: in compliance with earlier EU legislation, various tenders for rolling stock, material, services, etc are indeed forced to be tendered and yet (surprise surprise) the preferred French supplier will usually win. You can see this in many sectors, not just rail. There is always a way to tilt a tendering process in the direction you want it to go, it's just that British companies and institutions have never been very good at this (and would rather blame the EU than actually work creatively with the cards they have been dealt).
Consider also the state of regional rail in France, which is - by and large - terrible, with infrequent and uneven service on many lines. The relationship between SNCF, the various TER units and the
départements has not exactly delivered a world-class or even consistent level of rural rail service. If you give a region the power to call for tenders, you have the opportunity for local politicians and communities to demand better or more appropriate services.
To refer back to my post #5 above, by the mid-nineties almost all local rail had disappeared from northern Sweden because it wasn't commercially viable. It had nothing to do with whether it was the monopoly SJ or the privatised SJ AB running the trains: these economic decisions were more easily made in a system that was closed to competition so no-one ever thought differently. When the laws on procurement of rail changhed and the four northernmost counties of Sweden had the opportunity, they were able to win the political argument at a local level to subsidise local rail and then invite tenders to run trains that actually served the needs of people in the region. If I am not mistaken, the operator proposes a fee to operate the services specified in the tender: there is no financial reward for selling more tickets or setting the prices higher... so it is slightly different from the UK franchising model which is much more dependent on the financial return from tickets.
Norrtåg is not, in strict business-sense, a profitable operation. But the procuring counties know that and the operator gets paid what they bid for running the trains, and it gets thousands of people to school, college, hospital and work on time and has a broader societal benefit. It only exits because of the liberalization of the railway.
I'm not a champion for these neoliberal methods, by the way, but I am open the opportunities they bring when they are seized and used proactively by people who know what they are doing.