EU public procurement takes on a greener hue: developments in the application of social and environmental factors in public procurement

摘要

The aim of the EU rules on public procurement is to promote the internal market in the EU. Discriminatory purchasing, where public authorities in the Member States favour local or national providers when awarding public contracts, is a barrier (albeit not necessarily a legal one) to the free movement of goods and services within the Community. The justification of the rules is that without (a) a legal obligation to put public contracts over a certain value out to EU wide tender and (b) a common system of tendering which can be understood by all potential contractors in any Member State, a significant amount economic activity in the Union (between 11 and 16% of EU GDP) would remain effectively ring-fenced from the benefits and the disciplines of the single market. Effectively beginning in the early nineties, the EU thus adopted a series of Directives setting out highly prescriptive rules for the tendering of public contracts. This involved public contracts for works, goods or services over a certain value being tendered via advertisement the Official Journal of the European Communities, followed by the application of one of three prescribed procedures. Contracts are awarded following an objective and non-discriminatory evaluation.