Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-01-16-Speech-3-160"
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"en.20020116.11.3-160"2
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"Mr President, I too have companies in my constituency that are benefiting from this public procurement regime. Indeed they are benefiting from providing euro slot machines for public authorities even though Britain is not in the euro zone. There are lots of opportunities here. But I want to direct some very pertinent questions to the Commissioner and I hope he will answer those questions in his response.
Commissioner, we need some clarification regarding thresholds, as Mr Harbour has indicated. I would genuinely like to know what would be the effect on the public procurement market if thresholds were to be increased, and particularly on small and medium-sized enterprises and on consumers. I would also like to know, as regards our international obligations under the WTO general procurement agreement with third countries, whether it would be the case, as has been established by Commission services, that the US and Japan would actually be favoured contractors and that our EU suppliers would lose out because we would be operating two distinctly different regimes.
I should like to raise questions on the social criteria. Members have already stressed the compatibility of incorporating strong social progress criteria in award procedures while respecting the principles of competition law and of equal treatment and non-discrimination. It ought to be possible to combine economic reform and competition policy with strong and sound social justice and social progress principles. I cannot understand why, if we have a system of transparency and open competition, how we cannot prevent that from being used as a protectionist smoke screen in the publication of tenders. Why has the Commission not incorporated the full force of good practice from European case law into the body of this directive to ensure that we guarantee the highest social and economic standards in public procurement? Surely we owe that to our public authorities, to our consumers and indeed to our businesses. Why has the Commission gone down the route of a voluntary approach?
I hope the Commission will accept the amendments mentioned by my colleague, Mr Hughes, to allow for reserve contracts for sheltered employment schemes. I hope it will respect Parliament's wishes for a strong line to be taken in this directive, ensuring compliance with core labour standards and permitting the exclusion of those in breach of those standards."@en1
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