Brussels, 05/11/2003 (Agence Europe) - The Council and the EP did not manage to come to an agreement on the public procurement directives during their conciliation meeting on Tuesday evening in Brussels. The two delegations left each other around one in the morning without reaching a compromise on taking environmental and social considerations into account when awarding public contracts. It should, however, be possible to overcome these differences of opinion before the deadline for agreement, 11 December. Both directives, framework and sectoral, specify Community rules concerning the awarding of public works and services contracts (information, market access, criteria for attribution, etc.). The principle is that the contracts must be attributed first of all to the offer which is most advantageous from an economic point of view. Approving the report by Stefano Zappalà (Forza Italia) in July, the EP had adopted around twenty amendments.
The main difference between the Council and the EP is over the 70/95 amendment which places emphasis on corporate social responsibility when awarding public contracts. This amendment provides for the contracting authority to take into account, when awarding the contract, "the production methods of the company" concerned and its policy concerning "disabled persons and application of the principle of equal treatment". According to the Council, this wording is too vague and leaves the door open to arbitrary awarding of contracts. In any case, the directive should comply as closely as possible to the ruling of the Court of Justice when awarding the bus contract in Helsinki, which specified that environmental criteria and social criteria must be fixed depending on the specific nature of the contract. Both parties agreed to seek a common wording before 5 December. A second point of difference, concerning the "system of qualification" of companies was not tackled during conciliation. It concerns amendment 54, which would allow contracting authorities to create a list of "qualified" operators authorised to take part in calls for tenders. According to the EP, this provision would place public authorities on an equal footing with public utilities, which already have the possibility of creating lists of qualified operators.
The delegations did, however, manage to reach agreement on several other points. Without totally taking on board the amendment which rules contracts for school books in countries where their prices are fixed (Germany and Austria) out of the scope of the directive on awarding contracts, the Council is willing to include such an exclusion in a "whereas" to the text. A suitable wording has, however, still to be found. The directive should, moreover, make a reference to the need to create Member State bodies responsible for monitoring application of the directives. It would nonetheless remain very general, pending a specific legislative proposal that the Commission had announced in its last report on internal market strategy. The Council also accepts an amendment which provides for the details of the contracting authority to be diffused on Internet sites of public authorities, in order to allow small and medium-sized companies to request additional information on procedures under way. A preliminary agreement was also reached on electronic signature. Finally, the delegations agree that the sectoral directive (water, energy, transport, postal services) should specify that the Commission and the Member States must ensure that third country dumping is not encouraged.