Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-19-Speech-2-398"
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"en.20070619.45.2-398"2
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".
Mr President, I wish to begin by thanking the coordinators of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection for supporting my work as chairwoman in bringing forward the first detailed piece of work the committee has undertaken on transposition and implementation of internal market legislation, in this case to examine the effectiveness of public procurement law.
Finally, there is a clear relationship between this report and the future of the single market. Indeed, the Commission is expected to report back on future policy in the autumn.
I would like to thank all colleagues for their input into this debate and all those who have contributed at our workshop and in many other ways. I look forward to strong support from the Commission for what I believe is a positive and a practical report to improve this important sector of the internal market.
The report is a culmination of months of extensive research and informal consultation with Member States, public procurement practitioners and specialists, and staff in the Commission. It has been greatly assisted by the Internal Market Committee’s secretarial staff, to whom I also express my thanks.
We held a workshop to look at best practice, putting the spotlight on public procurement and demonstrating Parliament’s commitment to better regulation while improving businesses’ experience of EU law and demonstrating the benefits for the citizen.
Why did we decide to look at public procurement legislation? A series of negative press articles from 2003 to 2006 seemed to suggest that the internal market was failing because of a lack of regard for EU procurement rules, in particular the rules on non-discrimination on grounds of nationality. Concerns were also expressed that the number of illegal direct awards was rising. The public procurement market, estimated to be around 16% of the EU’s GDP and worth some EUR 1.7 trillion, is clearly of enormous economic significance for growth and job creation across the EU. An increasing amount of public procurement is carried out by our local authorities offering potential for more jobs at local level, in particular for SMEs.
Our analysis led us to the view that there are, indeed, a number of problems with the correct application of EU public procurement law, including cases of cross-border discrimination. A significant number of Commission infringement cases deal with matters of public procurement, and we could have drawn up a report naming and shaming bad practices or naming the Member States, five of which have still, in 2007, not implemented the Public Procurement Directives. To have done so would have guaranteed us media headlines.
However, we believe that, on balance, the opening of the public procurement market across the EU is contributing positively to the health of the internal market and helping the EU to meet the Lisbon goals. Therefore, we chose instead to focus in a constructive way on actions that would improve the record of Member States in tackling persistent – and, indeed, emerging – transposition and implementation problems.
The report therefore recommends that the Commission propose an action plan strongly encouraging Member States to tackle the problems. We ask for collaborative practices between Member States and the Commission, including informal information sharing at an early stage. We stress the role of informal dispute settlement, alongside formal remedies. We are asking the Commission to publish guidelines on the application of social criteria, once its study in this area is complete, and we want to see more exchange of best practice in public procurement with, for example, systematic training of procurement professionals and coordination of the work of European networks for the exchange of best practice. We are recommending adoption of all optional elements of the new directive, such as e-auctions, and we want to see set up national advisory agencies to assist contracting authorities as well as tenderers.
We recognise that the Commission needs sufficient human resources in this area to deal with the problems, and we are also calling for better data collection in public procurement, which we know is a very difficult area because of the sheer volume involved and the varying national accounting systems. We want political commitment from the Member States, in particular, to accelerate the correct transposition and implementation of this legislation.
A current hot issue is in-house service provision and the applicability of the public procurement rules to public-public partnerships. The committee decided there is not currently sufficient ECJ case-law following the Teckal case to provide legal clarity on what public authorities should do. However, we urge the Commission to continue its work in this area to resolve the issues and get legal clarity. I remind colleagues that we recently adopted Mrs Weiler’s report, which makes very good recommendations on public-public partnerships."@en1
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