Supplier participation in procurement markets outside of their national boundaries is a pre-condition for the success of Community policy in this area. This warrants a special policy effort to improve SME access to procurement markets, in particular to fulfil needs expressed in the area of information and training. Even though the legislation may be starting to take effect, the perception is that significant barriers remain . The latter include traditional obstacles to trade such as linguistic or cultural barriers and the need, for marketing and commercial purposes, to establish a local presence. This may or may not be the result of an infringement of Community rules in this area.
Some findings are however, more worrying .
These two items are supposed to be tackled by the transparency and non-discrimination provisions built into the procurement directives. The Green Paper on Public Procurement Against this background, a thorough debate was needed to explore means of improving the situation. The Commission is currently carefully analysing the 300 contributions received, which deal with all of the topics and issues raised in the Green paper. The preliminary position of Parliament is against consolidation. Enforcement Whilst most contributions from all categories of respondents stress the importance of an effective and uniform application of the procurement rules throughout the Union, when it comes to enforcement the general preference is for the maintenance of the status quo.