Brussels, 03/12/2003 (Agence Europe) - Thanks to the new public procurement directives, "the possibility of passing contracts onto one's friends will be greatly reduced, which should have an impact especially in Italy", commented Italian Minister for European Affairs Rocco Buttiglione after the successful conclusion of the conciliation meeting between Parliament and Council on Tuesday evening in Brussels. Both institutions finally reached a compromise on the main issue outstanding - the possibility of attributing contracts according to environmental and social criteria.
These directives, both framework and sector specific (water, energy, transport and postal services), simplify and modernise the Community rules concerning the awarding of public contracts for works and services. The aim is to ensure respect of the principles of equal treatment, non-discrimination and transparency, when awarding such contracts throughout Member States. They fix the rules for information on calls for tenders, access to contracts, exclusion of tenderers found guilty of money laundering, criminal activities or action to the detriment of EU financial interests. The directives will apply to contracts worth over EUR 162,000 or EUR 249,000 according to the nature of the market, for supplies and services (other than defence and certain contracts signed by central authorities), and EUR 6.2 million for works contracts.
The directives are essentially based on the principle of the most advantageous economic offer. Under pressure from Parliament, the adjudicating authorities may, however, define, in the call for tenders, the environmental and social criteria when these are linked to the nature of the contract. The Concordia ruling of the Court of Justice on attribution of the bus contract in Helsinki transposes the necessary link between these criteria and the nature of the contact. The working methods of a company may be taken into account in this context. In other words, Rocco Buttiglione explained, a public authority will be able to ask in the call for tenders that the company employ a certain percentage of disabled persons. Maria Berger (PES, Austria), EP co-rapporteur, said it was "important to find a balance between competition, the principles of non-discrimination for market access and the possibility for municipalities to apply ecological and social criteria". Within the Council, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Greece were also in favour of including environmental criteria whereas the British and Irish were, among others, opposed to this.
The EP and Council also reached an agreement to exclude contracts relating to intellectual services from electronic contract awarding procedures. As we pointed out before (EUROPE of 2 December, p.16), both legislators agreed about the contract for school books, in order to allow Germany and Austria to keep their fixed book price policy. They also agreed not to introduce specific rules for "qualification systems", that is, the possibility to draw up in advance lists of companies fit to answer calls for tenders.
Negotiations on these texts proposed in May 2000 by the Commission "were very difficult", noted the Chairperson of the EP Delegation in conciliation procedure, Charlotte Cederschiöld (EPP-ED, Sweden). She felt that the result is a "text of quality, easy to understand and to implement". These texts are essential for a contract that represents a volume of EUR 1,400 billion in the EU, and still more after enlargement, the Parliament rapporteur Stefano Zappalà (Forza Italia) stressed. The Commission's Director General for the Internal Market, Alexander Schaub, welcomed this agreement which gathers in two directives "a mountain of scattered provisions" to make up a "coherent whole, easily available and applicable".