Brussels, 11/10/2006 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 10 October, the internal market committee adopted, by a large majority, the report by German Social Democrat MEP Barbara Weiler on the Commission Green Paper on public-private partnerships (PPPs) (see EUROPE 9077). It backs the Commission's twin-track approach, which is currently studying whether to present a directive for concessions in 2007 and will present an interpretive communication for institutionalised PPPs before the end of 2006. Ms Weiler, although satisfied, would have preferred her report to call on the Commission to launch a legislative initiative for institutionalised PPPs too. She intends to put forward amendments to this effect before the vote in plenary session, which could take place in October, or November. According to a compromise amendment MEPs opposed the setting up of a separate legal regime for PPPs, but they acknowledged the need for a legislative initiative in the area of concessions. Any new directive on concessions would have to make a clear distinction between public procurement concessions through “objective criteria”, take account of the “limited duration” of concessions and allow for appropriate thresholds from which the new rules will apply. In drawing up its proposal, the Commission will also have to give serious consideration to the interests of regional authorities.
MEPs spoke of the great legal insecurity in the application of the in-house management criteria with regard to the proliferation of European caselaw. They therefore called on the Commission to define criteria which would provide local authorities with sufficient room for manoeuvre to allow them to choose how best to organise the provision of a service. They said that inter-communal cooperation should not be subject to European public procurement law if this cooperation was carried out: - between local authorities; - or when the full supervisory rights of the local authorities concerned over the entities carrying out the public tasks are similar to those they exercise over their own departments, and these entities carry out the essential part of their activities with the local authorities concerned.
By opposing the creation of a European agency on PPPs, MEPs have moved away from the Commission proposal to put in place a centre of expertise under the aegis of the European Investment Bank. They favour, rather, the exchange of good and bad practice through a network of the competent national and regional authorities. Echoing the recent Commission communication on low-value public procurement (see EUROPE 9238), they also rejected any legislation on awarding contracts below current European threshold levels.
Concessions are a sort of PPP, differing from typical public procurement in that the franchisee bears some of the operational and financial risks and is remunerated at least in part through the operation of the franchise. PPPs are said to be institutional when they involve the creation of a legal entity held jointly by the partners, public or private. (mb)