To underline that the focus of the Commission at this stage has to be on the implementation of the 2014 Directives since even if there is a European legal framework, Member States have a degree of flexibility and discretion in the way they transpose this legislation in their national systems and this might, for instance, restrict SMEs access to public contracts or impede cross-border procurement.
To highlight that the CoR analytical work relating to the European Semester shows that public procurement is a recurrent territory-related obstacle to investment . The CoR study on Obstacles to investments at local and regional level indicates that public procurement rules represented a significant challenge to investment for cities and regions, in particular due to complexity or inefficiency in the public procurement framework and to the excessive length and uncertainty regarding legal procedures.
Ask the Commission to carry out, within three years of transposition in any Member State, an in-depth assessment of how EU public procurement rules have been transposed into national law and how they are implemented; takes the view that this assessment should focus on how they are implemented at local and regional level, given the share of sub-national authorities in public procurement, and on the assessment of the extent to which the new rules have facilitated SMEs' access to procurement procedures, reduced bureaucratic hurdles and increased the use of strategic procurement; the CoR is ready to co-operate with the European Parliament in this exercise.
The opinion highlighted the problems linked to the transposition and implantation of the current European Public Procurement Directives as well as the goldplating and excessively complicated administrative procedures introduced in some Member States. The CoR has followed this up by commissioning a study on the implementation of the European Public Procurement Directives as well as carrying out a survey on the same topic in cooperation with the CEMR and a consultation in the framework of the RegHub initiative. These efforts aim to identify the main problems as well as suggestion possible solutions and to feed into the opinion on the implementation of European Public Procurement Directives (rapporteur: Habermann) that is to be adopted by the CoR plenary in October 2019.
The CoR also organised workshops in cooperation with the CEMR and with the participation of the European Commission on the European Public Procurement Directives.
THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS
Calls on the Commission to carry out a thorough assessment, within three years of transposition in all Member States, of how EU rules on public procurement have been transposed into national legislation and how they are being implemented, recommending a multilevel approach; considers that this assessment of the implementation of these rules should emphasise both the way in which they are implemented at local and regional level, in light of the weight of subnational authorities in the field of public procurement, which represent key partners in the implementation phase, and the extent to which the new standards have simplified or complicated regulation in this area, transposing the directives properly, facilitated access to calls for tender by SMEs, cut red tape and increased take up of strategic procurement. Moreover, it should assess whether they have contributed and to what extent to an increase in public and public-private investment, to savings and efficiency in public spending and improving employment. As a follow up to discussions in the Task Force on Subsidiarity the CoR is prepared to cooperate with the other European Institutions in providing better feedback on EU policy implementation at local and regional level with the aim to make the Union's legislation work better for its citizens;
supports the views that effective governance of public procurement is an integral part of the quality of public administration across the EU, since it is a genuinely cross-cutting government function concerning virtually every public body from federal ministries to local state-owned utilities, making it broadly representative of the quality of government and to this end public procurement should be incorporated into the EU's better regulation agenda.