Brussels, 27/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - The two leading candidates for France's presidential elections both said on French television on Thursday 26 April that they would be fighting for reciprocity for public contracts in Europe, rejecting where necessary bids from companies registered outside Europe that do not apply the same standards as European companies. Socialist candidate Francois Hollande said this rule should have been introduced a long time ago, describing it as “fair trade”, while the other candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, said that if no EU legislation to this effect were introduced within the space of a year, then he would apply reciprocity in France for public contracts at local and national level even if other EU countries did not follow suit. On the campaign trail, he went further, calling for some contracts to be reserved for small European businesses.
At the end of March 2012, the European Commission unveiled a draft regulation on public contracts worth more than €5 million, allowing public authorities in Europe to reject bids from companies registered outside the EU that discriminate against bids from European companies bidding for public contracts in non-EU countries (see EUROPE 10579). The idea is that the regulation would encourage non-EU countries to grant more contracts to EU companies in order to be able themselves to access the EU market.
In theory, France can introduce its own rules on any issue not covered by EU legislation, but the EU is a party to the public tender agreement at the World Trade Organisation, whereby some public contracts in Europe may be bidded for by the 20 or so other parties to the agreement, including the United States, Japan and Canada. French laws must not contravene the WTO agreement, on pain of retaliatory measures by international partner countries. In addition, it would be difficult to counteract the spirit of draft EU legislation. The European Commission has put pressure on Germany and the United Kingdom and got them both to alter their savings tax agreement with Switzerland in order to make them compatible with existing (and future) EU legislation. (MB/transl.fl)