The recent ECJ Judgment in case C-124/10 P Commission v Électricité de France (EDF) has clarified an important point in EU State aid law that bears attention: the ‘private investor' test is not an exception, but the general test that the Commission must apply. This paper critically appraises...

This paper looks at how the EU public procurement rules have shown a tendency to permanently expand their scope of application, both within and outside the EU. Inside the EU, the expansion has primarily resulted from blurred coverage boundaries and a creeping application outside their explicit...

This chapter assesses the use of public procurement to enforce labour standards from a competition and State aid perspective, and concentrates on the establishment of contract compliance clauses under the rules of Article 26 of Directive 2004/18/EC and Article 70 of Directive 2014/24/EU and in...

This paper provides a critical assessment of the Feasibility study concerning the actual implementation of a joint cross-border procurement procedure by public buyers from different Member States prepared by BBG-SKI for the European Commission. The paper submits that the study provides some...

Despite growing global interest in the use of algorithmic behavioural screens, big data and machine learning to detect bid rigging in procurement markets, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) was under no obligation to undertake a project in this area, much less to publish a...

In EasyPay and Finance Engineering (C-185/14), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has revisited the concept of undertaking for the purposes of the application of EU competition law. It has clarified the test applicable to economic agents engaging in ‘mixed' economic and...

This chapter revisits the interaction between the EU rules on State aid and on public procurement. It probes the standard presumption that compliance with EU procurement rules excludes the existence of State aid because public tenders are apt to replicate market conditions and thus suppress any...

This paper aims to assess the likelihood that State aid enforcement can be revitalised in the post-crisis period as a result of the 2012-2014 State aid modernisation process (SAM). The paper takes the view that State aid enforcement was left in a difficult impasse as a result of the...

EU public procurement law relies on the specific enforcement mechanisms of the Remedies Directive, which sets out EU requirements of administrative oversight and judicial protection for public contracts. Recent developments in the case law of the CJEU and the substantive reform resulting from...