Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-05-17-Speech-1-169"
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"en.20100517.18.1-169"2
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"Mr President, I would like to include in my thanks all the shadow rapporteurs for their constructive cooperation and for the good results achieved in committee so far. Allow me to reiterate and highlight the main points of my report.
Firstly, we need greater legal certainty for all those involved – contracting authorities and contractors – with a view to better regulation. My report stresses the particularly great significance that public procurement has in times of crisis. However, my report also criticises the fact that the complex interaction of European legislation and national transposition has not resulted in a simplification and debureaucratisation of public procurement, as was, in fact, the aim of the 2004 revision, but rather in more work, high external costs for legal advice and protracted procedures. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of innovation and quality. Numerous studies show this to be the case. Far too often, the lack of legal clarity results in the cheapest offer being selected, rather than the best tender.
Whilst the Commission now provides assistance in the area of green procurement, there is no such assistance in the areas of socially responsible procurement, fair trade or the promotion of innovation through procurement. The Commission has some urgent reworking to do here.
Better coordination within the Commission is also urgently needed. The European Court of Justice has removed a number of legal uncertainties in recent judgments and strengthened the role of public procurers, for example, by indicating that the scope of the directives should not be extended into areas such as urban planning. These judgments do not give contracting authorities a blank cheque, but rather provide them with a clear framework. This, too, was something I sought to reiterate in my report.
One final point remains: the matter of the service concessions, on which opinions differed greatly within the committee. My position on the matter has not changed. The service concessions were deliberately removed from the directives on procurement in order to ensure greater flexibility in these areas and to take account of cultural differences. This position is also supported by all the stakeholders that I have spoken to, whether they be municipal umbrella organisations, public enterprises – particularly in the water industry, industrial associations, trade unions or, not least, NGOs. That is also something that I wanted clearly reiterated in my report.
I have one further point to mention that is also very important to me: public procurement must not result in the institutions selected losing their democratic rights. If we find that many municipalities are now including fair trade as an important criterion in public procurement decisions – whether when buying coffee or for other products – then I think it is important to bolster this. In this event, it would be very important for the Commission to help the municipalities and, if they make a mistake, to be there to advise them. Instead, the Commission has instituted new legal proceedings against the Netherlands in respect of precisely such mistakes. I consider this sort of thing counterproductive because it runs counter to the political decisions made by the political bodies."@en1
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