New EU rules on public procurement and concessions were published today, 28th March, in the Official Journal of the EU. The legislation will enter into force on 17 April 2014.  Member States will then have 24 months to implement the provisions into national law – except for electronic procurement, where they will have an additional 30 months.

The directives modernise the existing tools and instruments by making them simpler, more flexible and easier for companies, particularly SMEs, to bid for public procurement. The rules on concessions establish a clear legal framework to give public authorities the necessary legal certainty performing their duties

Welcoming this publication, EUPLAT agrees with the alerts raised by key policy-makers involved in these discussions: a correct implementation of these texts in the 28 Member States is of paramount importance. In this respect, the adoption of electronic procedures assumes a particular role. EUPLAT is therefore determined to make these laws beneficial for all actors, mainly public authorities and SMEs, contributing with an expertise of more than 15 years this area. The members of the Association are Public Procurement electronic platform providers supporting more than 3.000 contracting authorities running thousands of acquisition procedures with  more than 500.000 economic operators, the large majority of them, SMEs.

Public contracts that are covered by the European directives are valued at around €420 billion, making it a key driver of our economy. See MEMO/14/20 on public procurement directives and MEMO/14/19 on concessions.