This paper explores three of the challenges that public buyers face when designing public tenders to support the delivery of smart urban mobility initiatives and when supervising the execution of the relevant contracts. First, the paper covers emerging issues around access and reuse of transport...

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...

This paper briefly reviews the need for the Proposed Concessions Directive and the opportunity of the proposal; explores the logic and main aspects of the Proposed Concessions Directive, particularly regarding its more ‘concession-specific' rules on their economic balance; and offers some...

This paper focuses on the recent novelties introduced by the ‘Almunia' Package in the regulation of activities at the intersection of the EU rules on State aid, public procurement and the financing of SGEIs. Taking the uncertainties left by the fourth Altmark condition as the point 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 attempts a concise comparison of the rules applicable to the rejection of abnormally low and non-compliant tenders in a number of EU jurisdictions (namely, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom). In order to set the common ground for the...

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...

Este artículo reflexiona críticamente acerca de las posibilidades de controlar el comportamiento de mercado del comprador público mediante la aplicación de las normas comunitarias de defensa de la competencia y de contratación pública, con un énfasis particular en su aplicación por la...

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 discusses the main approaches to the regulation of outsourcing to date, taking in particular the perspective of incomplete and relational contracts. The paper is the foundation of a larger project on the reorientation of outsourcing and its regulation in the light of recent...