Portugal
Back in 2021 the then Portuguese government decided to make procurement more flexible as to ensure the Recovery and Resilience Facility money was spent quickly. In 2023 I warned about some of the risks that the reform had introduced here and here. Fast forward to 2024 and the Portuguese Audit
Portugal
A flipside of having commented on the recent Portuguese general election party manifestos is that I now have a record of proposals. None paid much attention to procurement and certainly no one suggested a profound revision of the Public Contracts Code. Fast forward a mere 4 months and that is
Public Procurement
The Portuguese government presented last week its 32 point anti-corruption plan. If you remember the coalition’s electoral manifesto, fighting corruption was one of its planks. Four of the 32 proposals are directly connected with public procurement, but the idea of hardening the rules on conflict of interest seems to
Portugal
I mentioned a couple of times in this blog that the 2021 reform to the Portuguese Public Contracts Code implemented some questionable choices under the guise of facilitating the award of contracts to make the most of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. However, until now I had not noticed what
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
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
With today's announcement of his resignation on the back of a corruption probe, the time of Antonio Costa as Portuguese Prime-Minister reached its end. I think it is appropriate to look into his legacy of 8 years as PM in the field of public procurement. The transposition of
Public Procurement
After parts I, II and III we finally reach part IV on the purchase or leasing of vehicles (contract type - 5) For these, the Annex establishes four different award criteria and two contract performance clauses/technical specifications, with issues to be found on both, mostly due to the non-technology
Public Procurement
After the first two entries (here and here) of a more general nature, this one will be focused on contract specific critiques, in particular food procurement (contract types 9 and 15). I will be doing the post on vehicles sometime later this week Contract type 15 - food products, catering
Public Procurement
Yesterday I looked into the main text of the draft Council of Ministers Resolution introducing mandatory green public procurement in Portugal. I had assumed that looking into it would be a two part affair. Turns out it will be a four part one instead since I keep finding stuff worth
Public Procurement
The Portuguese government is planning to introduce mandatory green public procurement criteria in the near future. It appears to be looking to do so no not with a change to the Public Contracts Code which is supposed to contain the bulk of the rules applicable to public procurement in the
Public Procurement
On my previous post about *that* train tender in Portugal, I argued that it was quite possible the contract involved a State Aid angle but stopped short of making a more definitive or certain claim. This was due to the issue of the economic advantage gained by the preferred bidder