New Tender's CPV codes already in Euroalert.net

Those of you who are already subscribers of the Euroalert.net weekly Newsletter, will be aware of the changes that the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities has made on the CPV codes which describe the content of contracts in public procurement. For those who haven't subscribed to the Newsletter yet, here are some tips.

Every day, the OJEU publishes in the S Series, more than one thousand calls for tenders for works, services or supplies contracts in public procurement: the same you can find every morning in Euroalert.net Calls for Tenders section.

In order to allow economic operators to have free and easy access to these contracts, CPV codes (whose 2008 version has been adopted September 17th), provide a unique classification vocabulary. This system is made up of a main vocabulary of eight digits which give a detailed description of the product or service the contract is related to, followed by a check digit which verifies the code. The more you go down in this tree structure, the more accurate the description is. Simple, isn't it?

There is also a supplementary vocabulary which, although it is not always used, helps to complete even more the description giving some additional details for one specific call. This is the short version of the full description of the new CPV codes for Public Procurement Announcements which we provide you in Euroalert.net. In this section you will also find some documents you can download, which will certainly be useful.

In essence, this coding system aims to provide the highest transparency and accessibility to information, contributing to the fulfilment of the Four Freedoms within the EU Single Market.

In fact, Euroalert.net widgets also provides some tools which can help to improve access to calls for tenders and commercial opportunities in public procurement within the EU, as it allows not only to automatically display them in any website, intranet or blog, but also to filter the results and display only those which really meet the needs of the subscribers. In order to make you as easy as possible to access EU contents, in Euroalert.net we have introduced those changes over the CPV codes from the very first day, adapting the publication and filters to these news.

In future posts we will be spending some time explaining how you can get the most from Euroalert.net Calls for Tenders widgets in public procurement, using the CPV codes, as well as some other features.