Article 71 establishes a barebones set of rules on how to determine the scope of coverage for third country economic operators, goods, services and works. It is composes of two main elements: an online tool to be developed by the Commission (paras 1 and 3) and an obligation for public
I have long described the architecture of procurement rules within the EU as a system designed not to enable great procurement but instead for impede really bad procurement. In essence it is a painting by numbers or a 'follow the recipe' approach that allows people with limited knowledge
I forgot to celebrate earlier this month the twentieth anniversary of my departure from Portugal. What was supposed to simply be a 3 month stay in Barcelona to get my head out of Portugal after an intense couple of years as a junior lawyer with too much responsibility but not
Article 70 is the first article of Chapter 5, that is the chapter on European preference. This first article establishes which economic operators, goods, services or works are considered to be within from the Union (broadly considered) to warrant non-discrimination and equal treatment. In the absence of 'covered&
As announced last week on Linkedin, myself and Marko Turudic will be commenting the Public Procurement Act proposal. This will be done in a similar fashion to the work me and Albert Sanchez-Graells did with the transposition of Directive 2014/24/EU to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That
I had an interesting exchange last night on Bluesky about the Public Procurement Act proposal and its purported simplification. There I simply stated that 'simplification is yet to be seen.' My good friend Albert nailed it in the head on Linkedin: There is a difference between reducing the
IMPIC published recently its yearly report on procurement activity in Portugal for 2025 and as usual it is full of interesting bits of information. Here are a few I thought worth bringing up. Bear in mind that the data is aggregated and not broken down between above and below thresholds.
I had the pleasure of visiting the Commission yesterday alongside a number of procurement colleagues to meet with the team working on the Procurement Act and the Executive Vice-President of the Commission, Stephane Sejournee. The meetings were held under Chatham House rules meaning that while we can talk about
Linkedin (well, its procurement law niche) was on fire yesterday with the news that the draft proposal for the upcoming Public Procurement Act had leaked. The proverbial procurement cat is out of the Commission's bag just before the summer break and well in advance of the expected formal
Public has published a short impact study about the Procurement Act 2023 in the year and a bit since of its application. It is worth the reading and I will focus on a three key points that sprang to mind. The first point is on the pre-market engagement notices.
Earlier this week Andy Burnham set his stall up to become the UK's next prime-minister, with a speech which included some ideas for public procurement. Unfortunately I couldn't find a copy of the whole thing, but there's a direct quote from the FT:
10 years ago I woke up unsettled at 6am after a restless night, walked down to the living room and turned on the tv. The wind was sucked from me and soon after I walked back up again, hug my baby daughter and cried. This, however, is not a blog