Brussels, 21/01/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 27 January 2011, the European Commission will unveil a Green Paper marking the start of a public consultation exercise on implementation of the EU public market directives (2004/18/EC and 2004/17/EC). The consultation exercise will run until the third week of April and will feed into a review of the legislation expected in 2012.
The main subject of the consultation exercise is simplification of EU rules and ensuring over-arching objectives like the environment and social policy are properly covered explain circles close to EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier. A draft version of the Green Paper which this newsletter has obtained sets out the option of reducing some of the duties incumbent on local authorities (loosening the publication requirements and introducing a more standard negotiating procedure with the publication of calls for tender). To cut red tape, the Commission is asking whether the EU thresholds determining when public contracts are governed by EU rules should be increased and if so, by how much.
Public-public cooperation. Interested parties will be asked about whether mechanisms should be introduced into EU law for cooperation among public bodies, giving the example of rubbish collection services pooled among several local authorities. The European Court of Justice laid down the conditions for this type of partnership separately from the scope of EU directives in Case C-480/06, City of Hamburg and the Commission wants to know whether a detailed definition of public-public cooperation would aid legal certainty. (M.B. trans fl)