Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-24-Speech-1-096-000"
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"en.20111024.14.1-096-000"2
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"Madam President, I am grateful to every one of you for your attention and your interest in this important debate. Earlier, I said 17% of EU GDP, but, to be precise, Mr Tarabella and Mr Staes, that percentage has increased from 17% to 19% today because of the crisis and the economic slowdown that we are unfortunately experiencing.
My colleague, Mr Tajani, has, for his part, assigned the Directorate-General for Enterprise to work on the Lead Market Initiative, which helps contracting authorities to set up cooperation networks so that they can share their experiences and jointly acquire and finance innovative solutions while sharing the attendant risks. Consequently, we are launching pilot projects and have recently published a new invitation to tender for innovative projects and set aside a budget of EUR 15 million. Lastly, my colleague, Ms Kroes, has introduced measures to assist contracting authorities when they implement pre-commercial procurement methods.
As part of the public procurement reform that we are preparing, we are going to propose a new procedure, or partnership, for the procurement of innovative products. It consists of specific legislative measures to foster joint cross-border procurement and greater legal protection of innovative solutions as part of a competitive dialogue. All of that will supplement what I have just discussed.
With regard to the sustainable dimension of the social and environmental aspects that many of you mentioned, we envisage that the production process will be considered from the point of view not only of technical specifications but also of award criteria. Ms Berès talked about bonuses and penalties; I could mention, more simply, the granting of additional points to tenderers that fulfil the conditions in question, whether in terms of social considerations – employee working conditions, respect for the minimum wage, or, as I said, collective agreements or International Labour Organisation conventions – or in terms of environmental considerations, such as the use of green energy sources.
I personally have another concern, which I know many of you share, and that is cooperation between public authorities. I know that contracting authorities that wish to cooperate with each other often have difficulty today in distinguishing between situations in which the European procurement directives do or do not apply. That is why my services and I published a guide at the beginning of October to explain and clarify the framework that currently applies in this area. This document is intended for anyone involved in public procurement: it consolidates the case-law of the Court, making it simpler and more easily understandable for everyone.
I should like to go further and have even more legal certainty in this area. For this reason, I should like to include rules on public-public cooperation in the context of the reform that we are preparing. Several of you raised this issue of legal certainty, including Ms Gáll-Pelcz just now. I shall, of course, bear in mind the concerns expressed by many of you with regard to transparency and the issue of subcontracting.
There is another aspect that I wish to point out: the proper application of the rules. In some exceptional circumstances, they should be simplified as well. We will achieve this in two ways: firstly, via the role that the centres of excellence must play in supporting purchasers and, secondly, via the involvement of Member States in ensuring that these rules – including their social aspects, Ms Sartori – are applied better.
As regards the second section of the legislative package, I heard Mr Engel’s warning loud and clear when he told me that he was going to scrutinise the proposal that we are going to make on concessions. This issue was raised by Ms Thun und Hohenstein also. I have no ideological position on this issue. I just note that, 30 years on from the creation of the internal market, there are still no basic rules on service concessions. We are therefore going to make some proposals, which I hope will be as intelligent as possible, without wishing to interfere with, pick apart or weaken the small concessions that are of interest to many local authorities. I believe that, for the sake of transparency, legal certainty and good management, we need a minimum framework for regulating service concessions.
Does this mean that public services will have to be outsourced? I believe that this criticism that I hear now and then is unfair. Under EU law, public authorities are free to choose whether they carry out the public interest tasks that are assigned to them by using their own resources or by calling on external bodies to carry them out. If a public authority decides to use the services of a privately funded external body, on what grounds should we oppose it, if the decision is taken under fair and transparent conditions? The internal market in concessions must ensure that citizens benefit from services, particularly services of general interest, that offer the best quality-price ratio, and that businesses, particularly small businesses, can access procurement markets in the other Member States.
Lastly, a number of you, including Mr Arif and Ms Vergnaud, talked about the external dimension of the public procurement reform. My colleague, Mr De Gucht, and I are going to propose that the EU establish a clear and simple instrument that gives legal certainty to our purchasers and to businesses, European and non-European alike, by reflecting our international commitments in EU law. At the same time, we will establish a method of uniformly processing tenders from countries with which we do not have an agreement, such as China and India.
I apologise for those somewhat brief answers. This report is extremely important and useful, and I want to make that clear to Ms Rühle. I shall use it, and we may have further discussions on certain points. In any case, it has come at the right time, since, in the next few weeks, I will be proposing that the College of the European Commission adopt proposals aimed at modernising our public procurement legislation in the following three areas: modernisation of public procurement and simplification, concessions under the conditions that I have mentioned, and external dimensions.
Therefore, this just confirms or emphasises the importance of public procurement and of the need for us to use it effectively together on the basis of the information in your report and in the texts that I am drafting on the economy, growth and competitiveness.
Once again, I wish to thank you, Ms Rühle, and all of your colleagues for having drafted this report, which is extremely useful to us.
I should like to emphasise the issue that I believe is still the number one priority: simplification in the reform that we are preparing. Simplification should help both contracting authorities and, of course, businesses, and, in particular, as Mr Schwab, Mr Manders and others before them said, small and medium-sized enterprises, for which the current complexity and the cost of simply participating in a tendering procedure are insurmountable.
I was told the other day that the cost of meeting the administrative requirements for some tendering procedures amounts to almost 30% of the contract amount. Such conditions are beyond belief: a small business has to pay 30% of the contract amount, of the turnover that it hopes to achieve! That explains, Mr Engel, why many businesses give up and why there are so few cross-border contracts and lines of communication between businesses. The situation is already complicated in their own countries, but it is even more complicated in neighbouring ones.
Therefore, the first priority is to simplify matters for SMEs and, to do so, we need measures, which I will mention briefly: the wider use of the negotiated procedure, a drastic reduction in the documentation required, and then, as Mr Correia De Campos and Mr Kožušník said just now, the strengthening of electronic procurement.
At this point, I should like to say to Ms Tzavela, who mentioned the specific case of Greece and, perhaps, of other countries in difficulty, that we implemented a procedure to simplify public procurement procedures as an exceptional move during the financial crisis. Moreover, your committees are well aware of this.
On the subject of Greece, we have a task force that is working as we speak, Ms Tzavela. Moreover, that task force comprises highly skilled officials from my own Directorate-General, including the former Director-General, Mr Holmquist. We shall make a point of promoting the recovery of growth and work, and the successful completion of, among other things, the 150 projects that are still pending, but we really must have regard to legal certainty when we do so in order to avoid procedures and remedies that block everything. In any case, I am mindful of this issue.
With regard to the issues of innovation, social policy and the environment, which many of you raised, including Ms Girling, Ms Westlund and Ms Gebhardt, you asked me what else the Union can do. I believe that, as Malcolm Harbour said, many possibilities already exist within the scope of the current directives. The main priority is to use those directives properly. That is what I am committed to doing, and we are acting along those lines.
Several of you spoke about innovation – Mr Harbour spoke about it of course, but so did Ms Ford. The European Union strategy, called the ‘Innovation Union’, has defined a new approach. We want to boost performance in the field of research and innovation by bringing innovative ideas and discoveries to the market more quickly. The initiatives in question are intended to ensure that we remain competitive when promoting innovative procurement and, for example, that all Member States and regions in the EU honour their commitment to allocate a total budget of more than EUR 10 billion to pre-commercial procurement and innovative public procurement. This is what my colleague, Ms Geoghegan-Quinn, has proposed."@en1
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