Public procurement is an important segment of the Croatian economy. Due to the great value of the tenders, there is also a significant possibility of corruption within the public procurement procedure. This is the main reason why the implementation of basic principles and legal protection is so important in this context. If the necessary legal protection is not implemented, both the contracting entities and the tenderers may bear consequences, so the purpose of this paper is to show the complexity of the public procurement procedure, as well as the role and need for legal protection and its specifics. These specifics in particular point to the many possibilities of legal protection, they emphasize the most frequent complaints of the tenderers and the possibility of annulling the decision, as well as delaying the procedure all together. The statistical report of the State Commission for Supervision of Public Procurement Procedures (DKOM) was used as the main source of data, which very clearly depict the frequency of complaints and obstruction of the public procurement procedure. However, the work of DKOM is very often characterized by excessive legal formalism, which arises due to a narrow and strict interpretation of contents without considering the bigger picture. This situation ultimately discourages interested parties and thus prevents investments. Therefore, the objective here is to appropriately use the power of legal protection in the context of the aforementioned specifics and in accordance with the possibilities of a given situation.