THE NEW RULES OF THE EUROPEAN PUBLIC PROCUREMENT LAW

Abstract

In December 2011, the European Commission made a proposal on the review of the than European public procurement directives, namely the 2004/17/EC1
and 2004/18/EC2 ) directives. At the same time the Commission also initiated the adoption of a third directive, which contains separate rules on the
concession contract. Several considerations stood in the background of the overall public procurement reform. One of the defined goals of the reform was the making the European public procurement regulation more transparent and the ensuring a better access of European enterprises, in particular small and medium enterprises to the public procurement procedures. Another important aspect was to make the regulation simpler and more effective and to enforce better and stronger the classical public procurement principles (e.g. best value for money, competition etc.). On the next few pages we intend to stress the most important elements, key features of the above mentioned reform of the European public procurement law and to introduce some new legal instruments. Above the concrete legal changes of the regulation, we also refer to the public procurement reforms taking place in the Member States as a necessary consequence of the European changes and the socalled national implementation measures (NIMs), which have been already adopted till now.