Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-25-Speech-3-415"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20061025.29.3-415"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, I should like once again to thank Mrs Weiler, as well as the draftsmen of the opinion of various committees: Mr Langen, Mr Costa and Mrs Staniszewska.
I am going to try to respond to some of the questions asked, without claiming to respond to them all. I shall first respond to Mrs Cederschiöld, to Mr Lambsdorff and to Mrs Rühle. When a local authority grants certain services to another public body in return for payment, these are in principle services that have been the subject of a public contract. The public body benefiting from the contract is competing with private companies and possibly with other public bodies offering the same service. A general exclusion of all forms of public-public cooperation from the scope of the Community rules on public contracts and of the rules on concessions would therefore be unacceptable. The Court of Justice case-law is very clear in this regard. Conversely, not all forms of public-public cooperation are covered by Community law. The Commission recognises that clarification is required in order to determine the extent to which Community law applies to the delegation of tasks to public bodies and which forms of cooperation remain outside the scope of the provisions on the internal market. We are working closely with all the parties concerned in order to provide this clarification.
Next, I shall respond to Mrs Rühle and to Mrs Gebhardt on the issue of public-private partnerships and on the ‘in-house’ concept. The ‘in-house’ concept excludes the application of the rules governing public contracts when a public body grants a contract or a concession to a third party over which it exercises some control. The Court has outlined the circumstances in which this derogation may be applied. You will understand that the Commission wants this exception to the rules on granting contracts to continue being monitored. In particular, it seems extremely doubtful that a public contract or a concession would be granted in a discriminatory way to a company that represents certain private interests, while other private companies concerned are pushed aside. That is why we think it necessary at this stage to keep to the current definition of the conditions for application of the ‘in-house’ system: where authorities exercise the same control over the service provider as they do over their own services, and where service providers carry out the bulk of their activities with the authority concerned. For these reasons and also so as not to have to start from scratch with the new public contract rules, which are scarcely at the transposition stage in the Member States, we think it appropriate to legislate on mixed public-private companies and on the ‘in-house’ concept. An interpretative communication is the most suitable means of explaining the way in which the rules regulating public contracts apply to the selection of private partners for these partnerships.
In response to Mr Savary, who raised the question about the two calls for competition, I would say that we are aware of this problem and, as you pointed out, I referred to this in my speech. I should like to make myself very clear: we do not require two calls for competition simply because we believe that that is unnecessary. We explained this in the 2004 Green Paper on PPPs and we plan to clarify our position in the texts that we are due to present in 2007.
Mr President, I am well aware that I have not responded to all of the questions asked, but I should like now to conclude.
On the subject of concessions and of a possible legislative initiative, it is important not to rush things. To begin with, the Commission must look more closely at the costs and benefits of a binding initiative on the granting of concessions, and at other measures suitable for dealing with the problems at stake. On the basis of the results of this impact study, the Commission will then – most probably next year – decide whether the cost-benefit ratio warrants such a legislative initiative and will, if necessary, prepare a legislative proposal.
Furthermore, the message from all those who work in the area of PPP start-ups is clear: they are calling for practical guidelines on the way in which to apply the rules on public contracts to the creation of these partnerships. The Commission intends to provide these guidelines in non-legislative form for the reasons that I indicated in my introduction.
There can be no doubt as to the importance of PPPs for the European economy. I hope that Parliament’s report will help clarify the Community rules on public contracts and concessions so as to offer partners transparent and fair conditions of competition. It has become quite clear to us, in this debate, that Parliament's emphasis was on legal certainty, but you, for your part, will have also understood the Commission's preoccupation, in an area as vital as this for European investment, with retaining some room for manoeuvre, such as to enable it, while guaranteeing legal certainty, to invest more money where it is really needed. Moreover, several of you rightly stressed that these are absolutely vital tools.
Mr President, those are the answers that I wanted to give, and I thank Parliament once again for the quality of this debate."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples