Source: https://www.howtocrackanut.com/blog/tag/SGEI
Timestamp: 2019-10-22 17:39:41
Document Index: 670058502

Matched Legal Cases: ['Art 101', 'Art 57', 'Art 101', 'Art 101', 'Art 101', 'Art 57', 'Art 101', 'Art 69', 'Art 72', 'Art 18', 'Art 101', 'Art 102', 'Art 106', 'Art 107', 'Art 14', 'Art 12', 'Art 37', 'Arts 12', 'Art 106', 'Art 12', 'Art 37', 'Art 37', 'Art 107', 'Arts 101', 'art, 2015', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ']

I have been asked to teach a workshop on competition and public procurement for an audience of postgraduate students and practitioners in this week’s session of the Competition Specialist Advanced Degree convened by Prof Antonio Robles Martin-Laborda at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid.
It has been some time since I last taught the topic, so I had to reconstruct my mind map in preparation for the workshop. This is a sketch of what I have come up with (not mind-blowing graphics…). Some additional bullet-points of the key issues in each of the areas of interaction and cross-references to papers where I have developed my ideas regarding each of the topics are below.
In principle, this is the least controversial area of competition and procurement interaction; bid rigging being an instance of anticompetitive conduct ‘by object’ (under Art 101(1) TFEU) (see here for discussion)
Fighting bid rigging in procurement is high on competition authority’s enforcement agendas
Procurement structurally increases likelihood of collusion; which is partially compensated by the counter-incentive created by the rules on exclusion of competition infringers (Art 57(4)(c) and (d) Dir 2014/24/EU), provided leniency does not negate its effects
Analytical difficulties to establish a boundary between bid rigging (object-based analysis) and anticompetitive collaboration for the submission of joint tenders
Emerging approach to the treatment of joint bidding as a restriction of competition by object (cf EFTA Court Ski Taxi, 2018 Danish guidelines, see also here for analysis of their draft)
Particular complications concern the analysis of potential competition under Art 101(1) and 101(3) TFEU, in particular in cases where this is both used to subsume the practice under prohibition in Art 101(1) and also to assess whether the restriction is indispensable to the generation of efficiencies (or whether there were less restrictive forms to achieve them) under Art 101(3) TFEU (see here and here).
Exclusion & self-cleaning
Conceptual difficulties with boundary between Art 57(4)(c) and (d) of Directive 2014/24/EU, as well as applicable tests (see here)
Application complicated in leniency cases (see eg Vossloh Laeis, C-124/17, EU:C:2018:855, as well as due to different approaches to judicial and administrative finality (see eg Meca, C-41/18, EU:C:2019:507, not available in English)
These difficulties are particularly complex once the rules are implemented at the national level, as evidenced by the on-going Spanish sainete in the railroad electrification works cartel (see here and here)
Public buyer power
Inapplicability of EU antitrust rules (ie Art 101 and 102 TFEU) directly to the public buyer, given the FENIN-Selex case law (see here)
However, potential clawback under EasyPay’s strictest approach to separation test (see here)
Difficult exemption from EU antitrust rules even under FENIN, given exclusive activity (see here and here)
Very minimal regulation and oversight, especially in the context of their cross-border activities (see here, here and here)
SGEI & In-house
Interaction complicated in these settings, both in terms of State aid rules (see here), as well as in potential accumulation of conflicting rules under Articles 102 and 106(2) TFEU (ie publicly-mandated or generated abuses of a dominant position)
Increasingly complicated tests to assess SGEI entrustment (Altmark, Spezzino, German slaughterhouses)
Move towards declaration of some types of procurement (eProcurement, centralised procurement) as an SGEI themselves
State aid (more generally)
Difficulties remain after the 2016 Commission notice on the notion of aid (see here)
Difficulties also remain after Art 69 Directive 2014/24/EU, in particular concerning those tainted by State aid (see here)
Mechanism hardly used to monitor ‘adequate competition’ or to prevent predatory pricing
Difficult analogical application of notice on notion of aid and almost impossible market benchmark in most cases
Similarly complicated interaction between merger control and public procurement rules on change of contractor, although these are partially alleviated by Art 72(1)(d)(ii) Dir 2014/24/EU (but cfr ‘economic operator that fulfils the criteria for qualitative selection initially established provided that this does not entail other substantial modifications to the contract and is not aimed at circumventing the application of this Directive’)
Established in Art 18(1)II Dir 2014/24/EU, has the potential to be the gangway between competition and procurement spheres of EU economic law
Difficulties in its interpretation (see here), as well as in its application (see here)
Tags public procurement, competition, state aid, bid rigging, exclusion, self-cleaning, SGEI, CPB, centralised procurement, eProcurement, principle of competition, Directive 2014/24/EU, Art 101 TFEU, Art 102 TFEU, Art 106 TFEU, Art 107 TFEU, in-house, public buyer power, abnormally low tenders, contract modification
In its Judgment of 28 September 2017, Aanbestedingskalender & Others v Commission, T-138/15, EU:T:2017:675, the General Court (GC) rejected a complaint against a previous Commission decision (SA.34646) that the Netherlands had not breached EU State aid rules by funding TenderNed--an in-house e-procurement platform run by PIANOo, the tendering expertise centre for the Dutch government. The complaint derived from the fact that, prior to the creation of TenderNed, private providers of e-procurement services had been offering their services to Dutch contracting authorities. The creation of TenderNed and the offering of services free of charge to contracting authorities by this in-house entity logically killed the e-procurement services industry (or a part of it), which triggered the complaint. The circumstances of the case raise some issues that would be common to any intervention by a Member State that in-sourced (or nationalised) previously outsourced services, but the legal challenge was limited to State aid considerations.
In a nutshell, the GC decided that the Netherlands was not in breach of EU State aid law because TenderNed is not an undertaking, in the sense that it is not engaged in an economic activity because its services are closely linked to the exercise of public powers by the Dutch State and the Dutch contracting authorities that use this service. The State aid aspects of the Judgment are insightfully discussed in more detail by Prof Nicolaides.
Reading the case, one of the statements by the GC that caught my attention was that "e-procurement was a service of general interest, and not an inherent economic activity, which could be commercially exploited so long as the State did not offer that service itself" (para 108). In this post, I offer some thoughts on the potential implications of this finding for the funding of in-house entities and of central purchasing bodies (CPBs), in particular if the EU Courts were to take further steps down the road of considering the exercise of the procurement function non-economic and/or a service of general economic interest (SGEI)--and, in so doing, I pick up on some of the issues discussed in more detail in A Sanchez-Graells & I Herrera Anchustegui, 'Impact of Public Procurement Aggregation on Competition: Risks, Rationale and Justification for the Rules in Directive 2014/24', in R Fernández Acevedo y P Valcárcel Fernández (eds), Centralización de compras públicas (Madrid, Civitas, 2016) 129-163.
The consideration of e-procurement as an SGEI
In its Judgment, the GC arrived to the position that e-procurement is an SGEI on the basis of the following:
... the claim that, because commercial platforms offer services similar to those of TenderNed, the Commission should have concluded that TenderNed’s activities are economic in nature, does not take into consideration the developments that have taken place in the e-procurement market.
In that respect, it must be noted that that market had developed before Directives 2014/24 and 2014/25 were adopted and imposed an obligation on the Member States to implement e-procurement in those States. The fact that that obligation was decided upon at EU level implies that it was considered important to put in place mechanisms which would ensure greater effectiveness and transparency in public procurement. As the Slovak Republic indicated in its statement in intervention, the trend in the development of public procurement systems in Europe is towards e-procurement. The fact that Directives 2014/24 and 2014/25 were adopted is indicative of the intention to harmonise public procurement within the European Union, through actions by the Member States, so that it is carried out electronically throughout the European Union.
In addition, the Netherlands authorities stated ... that the existing commercial platforms did not offer the conditions relating to price, objective quality characteristics, continuity and access to the services provided that would be necessary to fulfil the general interest objectives established by those authorities.
Thus, in the light of those developments in public procurement rules, driven by public interest considerations, the Commission was entitled to state ... that e-procurement was a service of general interest, and not an inherent economic activity, which could be commercially exploited so long as the State did not offer that service itself (T-138/15, paras 105-108, emphases added).
In my view, this part of the Aanbestedingskalender Judgment is particularly weak because the arguments of EU harmonisation and unsatisfactory private supply can hardly be considered determinative of the nature of SGEI of a given service. The 2014 Public Procurement Package imposes an obligation to carry out e-procurement, but that does not make this an SGEI, as the competence to establish what an SGEI lies with the Member States (see Art 14 and Protocol No 26 TFEU). Moreover, if private provision is unsatisfactory, the Member State could opt to regulate minimum standards mandatory for all private (or public) providers. The Member State could also have established a framework agreement or other mechanism for the provision of the services by a non-in-house entity, or created public service obligations linked to the provision of e-procurement services. Thus, the conclusion that the evolution of the regulation of e-procurement at EU level implies its treatment as an SGEI is far from justified.
The original reasoning of the European Commission is equally unconvincing
Such services might have previously been needed because of the complexity of legislation, the lack of user-friendliness of analogue or digital tools offered by the government services, or because companies find it more convenient to outsource such activities. However, the State does not forego the right to carry out an activity that it deems necessary to ensure its public bodies comply with their statutory obligations by acting at a point in time when private operators – perhaps due to lack of prior action by the State – have already taken the initiative to offer services to the same end. Ensuring public authorities comply with their statutory obligations by channelling public procurement may be an economic activity for the complainants. It is not, however, an inherent economic activity, but rather a service of general interest, which can be commercially exploited only so long as the State fails to offer that service itself (SA.34646, para 68, reference omitted and emphasis added).
This fails to properly characterise the nature of the activities, which I think are better understood as the provision of the IT services and infrastructure necessary to carry out e-procurement, rather than as a public power of channelling procurement to an electronic platform (which is what the 2014 Public Procurement Package has done, or tried to do).
Moreover, this is functionally contrary to the position taken in the 2016 Notice on the notion of State aid, which explicitly establishes that '[t]he decision of a public authority not to allow third parties to provide a certain service (for example, because it wishes to provide the service in-house) does not rule out the existence of an economic activity. In spite of such market closure, an economic activity can exist where other operators would be willing and able to provide the service in the market concerned. More generally, the fact that a particular service is provided in-house has no relevance for the economic nature of the activity' (para 14). In this case, it seems clear that the creation and funding of TenderNed is functionally equivalent to the reservation of activity (which contracting authority would pay a private provider for the services it can get for free from TenderNed?) and it is obvious that there are third parties willing to provide those services (the complainants). Consequently, the position reached in the case at hand does not make much sense.
The functional incompatibility is even larger when contrasted with a different passage of the same Notice on notion of State aid, which foresees that
The fact that the authorities assign a public service to an in-house provider (even if they were free to entrust that service to third parties) does not as such exclude a possible distortion of competition. However, a possible distortion of competition is excluded if the following cumulative conditions are met: (a) a service is subject to a legal monopoly (established in compliance with EU law); (b) the legal monopoly not only excludes competition on the market, but also for the market, in that it excludes any possible competition to become the exclusive provider of the service in question; (c) the service is not in competition with other services; and (d) if the service provider is active in another (geographical or product) market that is open to competition, cross-subsidisation has to be excluded. This requires that separate accounts are used, costs and revenues are allocated in an appropriate way and public funding provided for the service subject to the legal monopoly cannot benefit other activities (para 188, references omitted).
In the TenderNed case, it was clear that 'while contracting authorities and special sector entities may ultimately be obliged to publish their offers via TenderNed, they are not prohibited from using other platforms like those of the complainants in parallel. Likewise, the Dutch authorities have emphasised that private e-procurement platforms can export TenderNed notifications on their own portal as well as import their notices to TenderNed. Commercial operators are, in other words, free to develop a differentiated offer of public procurement-related services in terms of quality or added value' (SA.34646, para 69, reference omitted and emphasis added). Therefore, the existence of a situation with potential anticompetitive effects derived from the public funding of TenderNed would hve required careful analysis, but for the finding that its activities are covered by the public power exemption (ie are non-economic, and thus TenderNed is not an undertaking; and not so much for their potential classification as an SGEI).
In my view, these functional inconsistencies are problematic. The simple reasoning that because EU procurement law mandates (or encourages) a specific form or modality of procurement, this means that it is an SGEI or a non-economic activity (which is also unclear in the reasoning highlighted above) is tricky and potentially problematic. In a case such as TenderNed, and even if TenderNed does not offer services to private buyers and does not receive any payments from contracting authorities and is centrally funded by the Dutch government, this is problematic because it has the impact of wiping out an entire industry (or category of services within an industry). And, in other cases where the entity considered to be carrying out an SGEI offers other types of non-SGEI services to the public or private sector, because of the potential additional distortions of competition in those neighbouring markets. The latter case would concern in-house and CPB if they were to be classed as SGEIs.
The consideration of in-house provision and/or CPB activities as SGEIs
Together with e-procurement, two other main areas of reform in the 2014 Public Procurement Package concerned the expansion of the in-house exemption (Art 12) and the more detailed and expansive regulation of the activities of central purchasing bodies (CPBs, Art 37). In both cases, the fact that contracting authorities assign contracts directly to these entities raises important risks of distortions of competition where there is private provision for the relevant works, goods or services. Thus, the award of public contracts under the exemptions foreseen in Arts 12 and 37 of Directive 2014/24/EU generates risks of State aid (see G S Ølykke, 'Commission Notice on the notion of state aid as referred to in article 107(1) TFEU - is the conduct of a public procurement procedure sufficient to eliminate the risk of granting state aid?' (2016) 25(5) Public Procurement Law Review 197-212), and the continued stream of revenue derived from reserved or directly awarded public business can put the undertaking in a favourable position when competing with other entities for private or non-in-house public business.
One potential defence against claims of violation of EU competition law and/or State aid law by in-house entities or CPBs would thus concern the possibility of classifying their activities as SGEIs (regarding CPBs, this is a claim Ignacio Herrera and I dispelled in the article referred to above, and similar arguments apply for in-house entities). And, if the thrust of the approach in the Aanbestedingskalender Judgment was to be followed, the European Commission and national competition authorities could be tempted to consider that in-house provision or CPB activities are SGEIs, solely on the basis that these are activities promoted or facilitated in the 2014 Public Procurement Package and, concerning CPBs, in subsequent Commission policy. However, in my view, this would be a wrong justification for the classification of those activities as SGEIs.
The main implication of classing an activity as an SGEI is that it both (i) allows the Member State to shield the entity providing the SGEI from compliance with competition rules "in so far as the application of such rules does not obstruct the performance, in law or in fact, of the particular tasks assigned to them" (Art 106(2) TFEU, and (ii) Member States have increased freedom for the funding of SGEIs than for the granting of other types of State aid [see generally, A Sanchez-Graells, 'The Commission’s Modernization Agenda for Procurement and SGEI', in E Szyszczak & J van de Gronden (eds) Financing Services of General Economic Interest: Reform and Modernization, Legal Issues of Services of General Interest Series (The Hague, TMC Asser Press / Springer, 2012) 161-181]. A fundamental element in this extended discretion for the funding of SGEIs is that an EU-compliant procurement exercise excludes the existence of State aid under the so-called Altmark fourt condition. This has been developed in some more detail in the 2016 Notice on the concept of State aid (paras 89 and ff), but it still assumes that an EU-compliant procurement is, for these purposes, one where there is a public tender and an element of competition--a position that the 2013 Guide to the application of the European Union rules on state aid, public procurement and the internal market to services of general economic interest, and in particular to social services of general interest does not completely clarify.
Therefore, the conundrum that a broad classification of in-house or CPB activities as SGEIs would create is that, in a setting where the direct award of contracts (however lucrative or benefitial) to in-house entities or CPBs is compliant with the rules in Directive 2014/24/EU (Art 12, Art 37(1), Art 37(4)) despite not having involved any element of competition, and where the conditions of those contracts cannot be tested against EU State aid rules because a very broad understanding of the public power exclusion of the classification of an activity as economic, and therefore of the in-house entity or CPB as an undertaking for the purposes of Art 107(1) TFEU, there may be no rule capable of controlling the channelling of public funds to these entities, regardless of the distortions in the market that their activities would create--which would also be excluded from assessment under the core competition rules of Arts 101 and 102 TFEU precisely for the same reason of the entities not being classed as undertakings due to the non-economic nature of their activities.
On the whole, then, I think that the greatest threat that results from the thrust of the Aanbestedingskalender Judgment is that too broad an understanding of what procurement activities imply the exercise of public powers, and an overlapping consideration of procurement activities as SGEI would lead to a complete exclusion of the applicability of all EU competition law mechanisms in this large sector of the economy. This would be an expansion of the problems derived from the FENIN-Selex doctrine, and one which I think requires urgent reconsideration by competition enforcers and, in particular, the European Commission [for in-depth discussion of the shortcomings of the FENIN-Selex doctrine, see A Sanchez-Graells, Public procurement and the EU competition rules, 2nd edn (Hart, 2015) ch 4].
Tags public procurement, State aid, funding, in-house, undertaking, FENIN, Selex, Compass-Datenbank, notice on the notion of State aid, SGEI
In its Judgment in EasyPay and Finance Engineering, C-185/14, EU:C:2015:716, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) assessed whether the grant by a Member State of an exclusive right to pay retirement pensions by money order to the national postal operator that formerly held the postal monopoly restricts the rights of alternative postal operators and is detrimental to free competition. The CJEU also assessed whether the granting of such exclusive right to pay retirement pensions by postal money order constitutes State aid or if it can be exempted on the basis that the activity constitutes a service of general economic interest (SGEI).
The case concerned Decree of the Bulgarian Council of Ministers adopted in the year 2000 whereby it ordered that retirement pensions had to be paid through the domestic banks and the post offices of the national postal operator ‘Balgarski poshti’ (BPoshti), which at the time was a single-member commercial company wholly owned by the State. Those postal money orders included the payment of retirement pensions at both the post offices and the address of the beneficiary by a postal worker, which was an activity covered by the universal postal service that only BPoshti was authorised to carry out.
A reform of the postal services act (PSA) to implement postal liberalisation determined that postal money orders are no longer included in the universal postal service and, consequently, under the postal legislation they should be services open to provision by alternative post operators in competition with BPoshti. However, the Council of Ministers maintained the reserve of this activity for BPoshti on the basis that 'the granting and payment of pensions form part of the exercise of State social security functions, which cannot be qualified as an economic activity. ‘Balgarski poshti’ was entrusted under a regulatory act with a public service activity which does not fall within the scope of competition law. The Council of Ministers adds that only that company has a branch network covering all of the territory of Bulgaria, including sparsely populated areas' (C-185/14, para 25). Privately-owned alternative postal operators challenged this reserve of activity under the both EU postal rules of Directive 97/67 (as amended) and Articles 106 and 107 TFEU.
The CJEU first addressed the point of coverage of postal money orders by the postal universal service and confirmed that 'money order services, which consist in making payments through the public postal network to natural or legal persons on behalf of and on the order of others, are not within the scope of Directive 97/67 (see judgment in Asempre and Asociación Nacional de Empresas de Externalización y Gestión de Envíos y Pequeña Paquetería, C-240/02, EU:C:2004:140, paragraph 34)' (C-185/14, para 32). Therefore, given the inapplicability of the sectoral postal regulation, the analysis of the reservation of this activity to BPoshti had to be assessed under the general rules in Articles 106 and 107 TFEU.
In this analysis, the CJEU returns to the definition of undertaking for the purposes of the application of competition law and stresses several aspects regarding the need for an inseparable connection with the national pensions system for an entity to escape the definition of undertaking on the basis that it operates within a system based on the principle of solidarity and oriented exclusively to perform a social function. In terms of the Judgment in EasyPay and Finance Engineering,
37 ... for the purposes of the application of EU competition law, an undertaking is any entity engaged in an economic activity, irrespective of its legal status and the way in which it is financed ... any activity consisting in offering goods and services on a given market is an economic activity (see judgment in Compass-Datenbank, C-138/11, EU:C:2012:449, paragraph 35).
38 ... the organisations involved in the management of the public social security system fulfil an exclusively social function. That activity is based on the principle of national solidarity and is entirely non-profit-making. The benefits paid are statutory benefits bearing no relation to the amount of the contributions (see, to that effect, judgment in Poucet and Pistre, C-159/91 and C-160/91, EU:C:1993:63, paragraph 18).
39 It is for the referring court to ascertain whether or not the money order operations carried out by ‘Balgarski poshti’, enabling the payment of retirement pensions at issue in the main proceedings, is involved in the functioning of the public social security service and, accordingly, must or must not be regarded as an economic activity falling within the scope of Article 107(1) TFEU.
40 In that context, it must be recalled that, in order to avoid classification as an economic activity, that activity must, by its nature, its aim and the rules to which it is subject, be inseparably connected with the national pensions system (see, by analogy, judgment in Aéroports de Paris v Commission, C-82/01 P, EU:C:2002:617, paragraph 81). Thus, in the main proceedings, any inseparable connection thereto of the activity of money order operations must be taken into consideration.
41 In that regard, it is apparent ... that the old-age benefits granted in the State social security system form part of the task of the [National Social Security Institute] which, in carrying out that task, uses ‘Balgarski poshti’ solely to handle the payments of retirement pensions.
42 In addition ... payment of retirement pensions may also be made through banks. Thus, according to the information provided by the Institut ... approximately 53% of the total number of retirement pensions were paid by bank transfer. Accordingly, the money orders used by ‘Balgarski poshti’ are not actually the sole method of payment of the retirement pensions.
43 Those elements constitute an indication enabling the view to be taken that the activity of money order operations enabling the payment of retirement pensions may be separable from the national pensions system. It is for the national court to assess the relevance of those elements, in particular in the light of the other factual and legal elements before it (C-185/14, paras 37-43, emphasis added).
This is an interesting approach, because the CJEU seems to have deviated from the line of case law that was tending towards an excessively lenient analysis of the 'inseparable connection' between market services and the discharge of public services (see here and, for more details, here). However, the specific circumstances of the case may have prompted this more nuanced or refined approach, particularly because the postal operator seems to be quite far removed from the core public function its (market) activity supports.
On the point of analysis of the reservation of the activity as an SGEI, which would exclude the existence of State aid under Article 106(2) TFEU, the CJEU focuses the analysis on the level of compensation that BPoshti receives for the discharge of the public service that triggers the reservation of activity. In that regard, it is worth noting that
45 ... a State measure regarded as compensation for the services provided by the recipient undertakings in order to discharge public service obligations, so that those undertakings do not enjoy a real financial advantage and the measure thus does not have the effect of putting them in a more favourable competitive position than the undertakings competing with them is not caught by Article 107(1) TFEU (see judgments in Libert and Others, C-197/11 and C-203/11, EU:C:2013:288, paragraph 84, and Altmark Trans and Regierungspräsidium Magdeburg, C-280/00, EU:C:2003:415, paragraph 87).
46 However, for such compensation to escape classification as State aid in a particular case, a number of conditions must be satisfied (judgment in Altmark, C-280/00, EU:C:2003:415, paragraph 88).
52 Where the undertaking which is to discharge the service of general economic interests ... is not chosen pursuant to a public procurement procedure, it is also for the referring court to make sure, in accordance with the fourth condition laid down in paragraph 93 of the judgment in Altmark (C-280/00, EU:C:2003:415), that the level of compensation is determined on the basis of an analysis of the costs which a typical undertaking, well run and adequately equipped, would have incurred in discharging those obligations, taking into account the relevant receipts and a reasonable profit for discharging the obligations (C-185/14, paras 45-46 and 52, emphasis added).
In the case at hand, the remuneration payable to BPoshti was set out in the Decree of the Council of Minister, which foresaw that the National Social Security Institute 'shall pay through its territorial divisions to the territorial divisions of the “Balgarski poshti” 8.5 thousandths of the pensions payable in the month in question for the work performed in connection with the payment of pensions through the postal network' (C-185/14, para 15). In my view, it seems unlikely that such a general figure established 15 years ago (coincidentally) matches the costs of a notional efficient postal competitor.
Thus, in general terms, the conclusion to be extracted from the Judgment in EasyPay and Finance Engineering is that the reservation of the activity of payment of pensions or any other benefits through postal money order (or equivalent) to incumbent postal operators (or any other undertakings) is very likely to fall foul of Articles 106 and 107 TFEU, unless the undertaking is chosen through a procurement procedure (which should be relatively easy to implement) or its remuneration is determined in strict accordance with the standard of a notional efficient postal competitor [for discussion, see A Sanchez-Graells, 'The Commission’s Modernization Agenda for Procurement and SGEI', in E Szyszczak & J van de Gronden (eds) Financing Services of General Economic Interest: Reform and Modernization (The Hague, TMC Asser Press / Springer, 2012) 161-181]. Let's hope that the domestic Bulgarian court follows the very clear cues given by the CJEU in that respect.
Tags C-185/14, EU:C:2015:716, SGEI, altmark, postal liberalisation, postal money orders, public service obligation, social security, state aid
Ignacio Herrera Anchustegui, from BECCLE - University of Bergen, and I have just completed a working paper on the new rules on centralisation and occasional procurement under articles 37-39 of Directive 2014/24. The paper assesses the risks, rationale and justification for the rules on centralisation and aggregation of public procurement in Directive 2014/24. The paper is entitled "Impact of public procurement aggregation on competition. Risks, rationale and justification for the rules in Directive 2014/24" and is now part of the University of Leicester School of Law Research Paper Series.
The paper explores the justifications advanced for the aggregation of purchasing and the countervailing risks it generates. In both cases, it focusses in economic and administrative aspects. It then proceeds to a summary overview of the new rules for the aggregation of public procurement in Directive 2014/24, and emphasised how the Directive is expressly recognising possibilities that clearly exceed the more modest approach in Directive 2004/18. Moving on, it then focusses on the potential justification for certain activities now permitted by the 2014 rules, and engages in a critical assessment of their competitive impact. The paper briefly highlights the far-reaching and not necessarily positive implications that a maximisation of the centralisation and aggregation possibilities under Directive 2014/24 could have, and proposes that strict competition law enforcement will be necessary to avoid undesired consequences. Some suggestions for further research are provided by way of conclusions.
The full paper is available for download on SSRN. Its full citation is:
Sánchez Graells, Albert and Herrera Anchustegui, Ignacio, Impact of Public Procurement Aggregation on Competition. Risks, Rationale and Justification for the Rules in Directive 2014/24 (December 5, 2014). University of Leicester School of Law Research Paper No. 14-35. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2534496.
Tags Directive 2014/24, SGEI, aggregation, central purchasing bodies, centralisation, competition, economies of scale, modernisation, professionalization, public procurement, state aid