Brussels, 17/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Monday, the European Commission adopted a directive imposing, from 1 May 2002 onwards, the use of standard forms in contract notices published in the EU's Official Journal. The mandatory use of these forms will improve the quality of published notices, thus favouring openness, efficiency and transparency, and facilitate electronic procurement. The Commission stresses that the use of these forms should make it easier for potential suppliers to use automatic search tools to find procurement notices of most interest and relevance to them. For purchasing entities, the standard forms should simplify and cut the cost of compliance with EU procurement rules. Public procurement markets are worth more than EUR 1 trillion in total every year across the EU.
The EU's public procurement directives require open, transparent and competitive procedures to be followed by contracting entities and authorise for the procurement of goods, services and construction. Notices concerning contracts falling within the scope of the directives must be published in the Official Journal and to this end, the directives include "model notices". As things stand, however, notices are frequently incomplete and contain errors. Moreover, there is a need to adapt the model notices to make it possible to facilitate public procurement using electronic means (Système d'information sur les Marchés Publics - SIMAP) for sending the notices to the Official Journal. The SIMAP online notification system, already operational and available to all potential contracting authorities, offers the possibility of taking full advantage of the standard forms for drafting, validating and despatching notices for publication in the Official Journal to the EU's Publications Office. The Commission feels that the compulsory use of the forms will help to ensure interoperability of the electronic applications used or being developed in Europe.