This paper describes the situation and applicable rules to public procurement below EU thresholds in Spain. The paper describes the main provisions regarding these contracts, which are substantially identical to those applicable to contracts subject to EU rules with the relevant exceptions of...

The relationship between public procurement and State aid control rules had been controversial for a long time. However, a growing academic consensus and, more significantly, the official position of the European Commission, ruled out that the award of a public contract can amount to the grant...

This paper stresses the negative impact that the excessive levels of transparency imposed by public procurement rules can have on competition for public contracts and, more generally, on the likelihood of cartelisation of the markets where public procurement takes place. The paper critically...

This piece reflects on the role of public procurement regulation in the face of a situation generating an extremely urgent need for the public sector to buy additional supplies and equipment, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Counterintuitively, at a time of heightened public expenditure, public...

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...

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...