The recently adopted UK National Health Service (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) (No. 2) Regulations 2013 include an interesting (and somehow unsettling) provision authorising anti-competitive behaviour in the commissioning of health care services by the National Health Service...

This paper takes the UK reform and modernisation of health care as a case study to examine how far Member States must pay attention to EU economic law in the reform of public services (SGEI) to modernise such services in the interest of cutting back on public expenditure and introducing...

This paper analyzes the rules and administrative practice concerning the selection, weighting and application of award criteria in public procurement procedures under Spanish law. It also touches upon the issue of challenges against award decisions, and the screening of abnormally low bids after...

This revised foreword to a special issue of e-competitions explores the EU competition law implications of public procurement activities. More specifically, it tries to highlight how bid rigging seems pervasive in the public procurement setting despite increased enforcement efforts (a situation...

The development of a more competition-oriented public procurement system is possible, on the basis of the principle of competition that is embedded in the EC public procurement Directives. This paper explores the existence of the principle of competition, roughly delimits its scope, and broadly...

This paper offers some reflections on the position advanced by the EFTA Court that a simple breach of EU public procurement law is in itself sufficient to trigger the contracting authority's liability in damages (Fosen-Linjen). I argue that this position is flawed because it deviates from...

In this short paper, I reflect on the case study of the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) for the English NHS during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. I put forward two main claims. My first claim is that the UK Government not only was particularly ill-positioned to deal...

The creation of central purchasing bodies (CPBs) sought to generate administrative efficiencies and to aggregate public demand to enable the exercise of buying power capable of delivering better value for money and an opportunity for strategic procurement steering. However, CPB activity can have...

In this short paper, I reflect on the way in which digitalisation can foster more sustainable procurement in the EU context. I stress the sine qua non importance of building an enabling data architecture and point at areas for further research

This country report provides an overview of recent developments in UK public procurement regulation, including the Post-Brexit rulebook reform, the proposal of special rules for healthcare services commissioning, the procurement chapter in the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement, and a recent...