Public Procurement Policy 2020 Pdf

[Stefanie Mordaunt]

Tocreate a level playing field for businesses across Europe, EU law sets out minimum harmonised public procurement rules. These rules govern the way public authorities and certain public utility operators purchase goods, works and services. They are transposed into national legislation and apply to tenders whose monetary value exceeds a certain amount. For tenders of lower value, national rules apply. Nevertheless, these national rules also have to respect the general principles of EU law.

This website provides information on European public procurement policies. A general introduction to public procurement is available on Your Europe. If you are looking for business opportunities in any EU country, please visit Tenders Electronic Daily. For information on grants and procurement carried out by EU institutions, please visit the Funding and Tenders Portal.

If you want to collaborate with peers in the EU, visit the Public Buyers Community Platform, a comprehensive and secure platform aimed at strengthening collaboration between public authorities, suppliers, and the European Commission in public procurement.

The public sector can use procurement to boost jobs, growth and investment, and to create an economy that is more innovative, resource and energy efficient, and socially-inclusive. High quality public services depend on modern, well-managed and efficient procurement.

Under EU public procurement rules, contracting authorities may take multiple aspects into account when purchasing works, goods or services. Examples include protecting the environment, supporting social considerations and fostering innovation. However, 55% of procurement procedures use lowest price as the only award criterion for public contracts. This indicates that public buyers are probably not paying enough attention to quality, sustainability and innovation.

To support the further uptake of strategic procurement, the European Commission will update and issue new guidance documents on the use of innovative, green and social criteria. The Commission will also promote the exchange of good practice, including in strategic sectors, such as healthcare, IT and construction.

Professionalisation policies at national level are essential to ensure buyers have the necessary skills, knowledge and integrity. They need to address training and career management of public procurement practitioners, and to provide tools to make the procurement process more efficient (e.g. e-procurement tools, guidelines, templates).

In October 2017, the European Commission adopted a 'recommendation on the professionalisation of public procurement' to encourage EU countries to take steps to increase the professionalism of contracting authorities.

The EU advocates open international public procurement markets and has committed itself to granting market access to its own public procurement markets. The section on international public procurement provides information on the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) and free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations with various countries, the International Procurement Instrument, and cooperation with enlargement and neighbourhood countries.

The Remedies Directives set minimum national review standards to ensure that rapid and effective means of redress are available in all EU countries when an economic operator with an interest in a public procurement procedure believes that it has been run in violation of the EU's public procurement directives and their corresponding national rules. In 2017 the Network of First Instance Review Bodies on Public Procurement was created to strengthen the remedies system and cooperation between national review bodies in the EU.

Improved and more accessible data on public procurement will make it possible to better assess the performance of procurement policies, optimise the interaction between public procurement systems, and shape future strategic decisions. The European Commission advocates for the set-up of publicly accessible contract registers, which publish awarded contracts and their amendments. Enabling the reporting of corruption by setting up effective reporting mechanisms and protecting whistleblowers against retaliation can also contribute to improving transparency and saving public money.

Public procurement notice data from Tenders Electronic Daily is available on the EU Open Data Portal. The Publications Office provides all notices in extensible mark-up language (XML) format, while the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs provides a smaller subset of this data (covering just some years, countries, and types of notices) as comma-separated values (CSV).

eProcurement refers to the use of electronic communications by public sector organisations when buying supplies and services or tendering public works. Increasing the use of eProcurement in Europe can generate significant savings for taxpayers. These savings would maximise the efficiency of public spending in the current context of fiscal constraints. eProcurement can also provide a new source of economic growth and jobs, including through the facilitation of access to public procurement contracts by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Contracting authorities are rarely buying together with only 11% of procedures in the EU carried out through cooperative procurement. This is a missed opportunity as buying in bulk can result in better prices and higher quality goods and services. It can also help contracting authorities exchange public procurement know-how.

The European Commission aims to promote joint cross-border public procurement and support training on SME friendly policies. This will help buyers work together, learn from each other, and ensure better value for money.

The Big Buyers Initiative is a European Commission platform for promoting collaboration between big public buyers in implementing strategic public procurement. Public procurement can be a key tool in driving the development of innovative goods and services on the European market. By working together, and pooling their resources, cities, central purchasing bodies, and other major public procurers can maximise their market power and impact.

Public sector procurement is subject to a legal framework which encourages free and open competition and value for money, in line with internationally and nationally agreed obligations and regulations. As part of its strategy, the government aligns procurement policies with this legal framework, as well as with its wider policy objectives.

In addition to these fundamental treaty principles, some general principles of law have emerged from the case law of the European Court of Justice. The most important of these general principles of law for you to be aware of in the procurement context are:

Since the 1970s, the EU has adopted legislation to ensure that the EU public procurement market is open and competitive and that suppliers are treated equally and fairly. The rules cover aspects such as advertising of contracts, procedures for assessing company credentials, awarding the contracts and remedies (penalties) when these rules are breached.

The EU rules are contained in a series of directives that are updated from time to time. Member states have to make national legislation (regulations) to implement the EU rules in domestic law by certain deadlines. The most recent update of the EU procurement directives was in April 2014. This followed a successful lobbying campaign by the UK government and our EU partners to negotiate a simpler, more flexible regime of procurement rules. Member states then had 2 years to implement these in national law i.e. by April 2016.

Once the 2014 EU Procurement Directives came into force, the government prioritised the Public Contracts Directive for early implementation because it would deregulate and simplify the rules for where most procurement spend and activity takes place.

The changes enable buyers to run procurements faster, with less red tape, and with a greater focus on getting the right supplier and best tender in accordance with sound commercial practice. The implementation of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 took effect from 26 February 2015.

Above set financial thresholds, if you are buying supplies, services or works for central government, a non-ministerial department, executive agency, or non-departmental public body, you must follow the procedures laid down in the Public Contracts Regulations before awarding a contract to suppliers.

Procurement for wider public sector bodies, such as local government, health and education, is also subject to the Public Contracts Regulations. However, the threshold contract values for goods and services is higher as explained in Procurement Policy Note 04/17.

The Public Contract Regulations 2015 also include a requirement for contracting authorities to have regard to CCS guidance on the selection of suppliers and the award of contracts, and to ensure that suppliers pay their subcontractors within 30 days as is already required of contracting authorities.

To help raise awareness of the new EU Procurement Directives, CCS also arranged more than 200 face-to-face training sessions on the main changes in the directives for people working in the public sector. Read the training materials from these sessions.

To help raise awareness of these new procurement rules, CCS also arranged face-to-face training sessions on the main changes in this directive for people working in the utilities sector. Read the training materials from the utilities sessions.

These regulations provide rules for the award of concession contracts above certain financial thresholds by public authorities and utilities. The thresholds for Concessions are different to the Public and Utilities thresholds, further information on Concession thresholds can be found in Procurement Policy Note 04/16.

The Public Procurement (Amendments, Repeals and Revocations) Regulations 2016 make consequential amendments to other legislation, including the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012. This should be read together with The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, The Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016 and The Concession Contracts Regulations 2016.

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