With just over a week to go until the general election in Portugal I am looking into the various parties proposals for public procurement. I will be following the 2022 results in order: starting with PS the most voted down to Livre, the final party with a seat in the
Even though eForms became mandatory back in October 2023 and existing standard forms system is about to be disconnected, Portugal is yet to introduce its eForm implementation. The existing system will be turned off this evening in the expectation it will come back online next Monday morning. So, if you
Ukraine
EU's pledge to deliver 1M artillery shells to Ukraine by March 2024 faces obstacles due to insisting on producing them within the EU. Some member states allegedly block sourcing from outside the EU. Industrial policy clashes with timely supply.
sustainability
A couple of years ago I attended a sustainable public procurement conference and asked one of the speakers about the tradeoffs adding more sustainable objectives to procurement would entail. In short, there are no free lunches and as such - on aggregate and at scale - this is likely to
I have just published a new article entitled "Looking into the Public Procurement Data Space and eForms" on the Public Procurement Law Review. As per the title it is focused on the PPDS and eForms as well. Here's the intro: "In 2017, the European Commission
The European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) was kind enough to invite me to take part in a lunchtime roundtable on February 27th to discuss the report by the European Court of Auditors on EU public procurement. The event is online and free as well. I am looking forward to
Ventilator Challenge UK
The UK's purchase of ventilators for the Covid pandemic is once more on the news. It seems a number of units purchased by the UK are now being sold at a fraction of the price via online auctions. Jo Maughan from the Good Law Project is quoted saying
hose of you who know the blog well will have noticed a change on the blog's layout since earlier this week. I decided to move the hosting from Squarespace to Ghost and start a rethink about what I want to do with the blog going forward. The move
Public Procurement
Over the weekend it was news in Portugal that the tender for 117 trains had been challenged in court by CAF and Stadler, two of the economic operators which presented themselves. In and of itself, this is unsurprising since by default most tenders in Portugal are challenged in the courts
Public Procurement
The European Court of Auditors published yesterday its report on EU public procurement between 2011 and 2021, looking into the competition for public contracts covered by EU rules. Frankly, it makes for grim reading: “Overall, we conclude that the level of competition for public contracts to deliver works, goods and
Public Procurement
As promised, you can find the (edited) slide deck for my workshop on sustainability in public procurement here. They have been edited to make a bit more sense by themselves and a I also took out a couple of slides pertaining to a work-in-progress from colleagues at CBS. It went
Public Procurement
This coming Thursday I will be doing a workshop at the Lisbon Environmental Law cluster from the University of Lisbon. It will be a homecoming of sorts for me as it is the first time I will be delivering a session in person at my alma mater exactly 20 years