Brussels, 19/06/2006 (Agence Europe) - Speaking at the beginning of June, Charlie McCreevy European Commissioner for the Internal Market declared at the annual conference of British professionals working in public procurement that, “One myth that I would like to dispel today is the notion that in some way SMEs get 'dealt out' of public procurement opportunities. Nothing could be further from the truth. The latest statistics available on this showed that 78% of the firms which were awarded a contract the value of which was above the thresholds, were indeed SMEs”. The Commissioner added, “this highlights the fact that SMEs are well placed to compete by themselves without the need for any 'crutches in the form of special protection”. The Commissioner believes that “there a plenty of opportunities in many Member States, for example, to make SMEs more aware of business opportunities existing in the field of public procurement” without having to amend current European directives. Mr McCreevy pointed to the following possibilities: to encourage wider use of prior information notices to give more time to an SME to prepare its tender; to use multi-supplier procurement techniques like dynamic purchasing systems and framework agreements, and by dividing the contracts into lots that are suitable for SMEs.
This, therefore, constitutes a reply to Thierry Breton, the French minister of finance, who requested common European level rules to be established for facilitating SME access to public procurement, at the informal Ecofin Council meeting in Vienna (EUROPE 9171). Mr Breton has also referred to a “Small Business Act”, based on US legislation that reserves part of its public procurement markets to US SMEs.