9 of May: Celebrate the Europe Day with Euroalert

Since Robert Schuman delivered his famous 'Schuman Declaration' on 9th of May 1950, Europeans celebrated that day the Europe Day. This statement officially has started what is today known as the European Union, but back then it started the European Coal and Steel Community. 

Although 9th of May is not a national holiday in any of the 27 Member States, as you can see on the calendar that we created, Representations of the European institutions such as the Representation of the European Commission in Spain, they do celebrate that day events to promote the European spirit. Among these activities, the European Commission in Spain has made available a mobile application  for Android and iPhone, and with the collaboration of Euroalert, so as not to miss any detail of the celebrations and that also allows you to know the latest news related to the EU.

In Euroalert, most of the content is related to the European Union. You can access to the EU breaking news from our News section and select the specific topic that interests you. You can also install a widget on your website with this news and customize it. On the other hand, if the information you need is related to financing and business opportunities in the EU, you can check the grants issued by the European institutions and also adapt them to your web through a widget that you can customize. Regarding the business opportunities that are published in the EU, among other competitive intelligence products, we "alert you" on the public tenders relevant to your business through our alert system 10ders Alerts. We can not forget the European legislation that is published daily in the EU Official Journal (OJEU). You can also follow it in Euroalert through our newsletters. In the coming weeks, we will announce important developments in our products competitive intelligence in public tenders that surely will be very useful for you.

This is the way that Euroalert has to celebrate the 9th of May, Europe Day with you: bringing you the European information you may need and what else you might be interested. If you want more information about any of our products you can visit our online store or contact us via e-mail or via Twitter and Facebook.

New rules on thresholds applicable to EU public procurement already published

Today we want to announce you a new change that will affect public procurement market in the European Union. As we already did in the past by detailing you developments such as the introduction of new CPVs in 2008 or the adaptation to the new features put in place by TED in March 2010, this time it is the matter for the changes introduced by Commission Regulation (EU) nº 1251/2011 of 30 November 2011 which modifies procurement Directives in respect to their application thresholds for the procedures for the awards of contract, and was published in the Official Journal on 2 December.

According to this Regulation, the minimum thresholds applicable to public procurement have been slightly increased. Although these changes will not be quite significant, the new figures will nevertheless have to be taken into account both by contracting authorities when launching procurement procedures, and by those companies interested in taking part in bidding processes for public contracts. The new thresholds will enter into force on 1 January 2012 and be applicable for two years.

Therefore, these new thresholds for the publication of public procurement announcements will change from 125,000 to 130,000 Euro in the case of services and supply contracts issued by central government bodies and from 193,000 to 200,000 Euro in the case of other contracting authorities. For services and supply contracts in the case of utilities and defence threshold will now pass for 387,000 to 400,000 Euro. In the case of work contracts and work concessions these figures will pass from 4,845,000 to 5,000,000 Euro.

On our side we will of course be prepared for any change which should be introduced regarding the tools and services on commercial intelligence based on public procurement that Euroalert.net provides for companies in Europe. We will make sure that you can keep on receiving tender alerts, requesting the lists of tender winners or authorities that you need, or receiving your product reports on public procurement, without being affected by these changes.

We would also like to take this occasion to remind you that if you want to keep track on new legislation published in the OJEU, Euroalert.net Customized Newsletters on EU information can certainly help you. They will allow you to keep up to date, not only about new legal developments, but also about news related to the European Union and funding opportunities for your projects. If you have any questions, you can send us an e-mail us to info@euroalert.net or contact us by any of the means described in our web.

One more step towards an ever closer Union on public procurement..., and more filters available for Euroalert.net

By the end of last year, and more precisely on December 20th 2009, the transposition period given to Member States to adapt their national legislations to Directive 2007/66/EC (the so called Remedies Directive), ended up, being that at the beginning of 2010 only France, Poland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom had fulfilled their obligation and notified the Commission about the measures taken to do so. Given that only three more MS had notified partial transposition measures, it leaves twenty MS which had failed to notify the Commission about transposition measures concerning Directive 2007/66/EC by the beginning of 2010.

Looking back, it was in May 2006 when the Commission put forward a proposal to amend the Remedies Directive aimed to ensure a more equitable environment in public procurement and encourage EU companies to tender in any MS by providing them higher legal certainty. This review based on previous consultations, was intended to improve the effectiveness of pre-contractual reviews as well as providing a way to fight against situations where redress measures were not sufficiently clear for unsuccessful bidders or even situations of “race to the signature” in which there is not a reasonable period between the award of the contract and its signature.

One of the key elements of this revision on Remedies Directives has been the introduction of a harmonized 10-day Mandatory Standstill Period between the award of the contract and its signature, in order to allow unsuccessful bidders to request additional information and take appropriate actions if they consider that their right has been harmed by breach of the rules. If the standstill period is not respected or the contract has been illegally awarded, the Directive provides the possibility to bring it to the Court and declare the ineffectiveness of the contract. The ineffectiveness of the contract can be declared on various grounds such as the failure to advertise the contract in the OJEU or the breach of the standstill period and the automatic suspension, and can be claimed up to six months after the contract award.

Apart from any dogmatic issues which have already come to the Palestra, it seems that contracting authorities, economic operators and national Courts will now have to face the legal consequences of declaring a contract's ineffectiveness, the compensations, as well as the eventual practical issues arising from that declaration such as protection of properties, subcontractors rights protection or any other situation originated. It seems, indeed, quite an interesting debate...

The new Remedies Directive targets very specially the illegal direct award of contracts, which has been considered by the European Court of Justice as the most serious breach of Community law in the field of public procurement on the part of a contracting authority, giving the Courts the possibility to declare ineffective a contract directly awarded if transparency and open competitiveness has not been respected.

Further to these redress measures, Directive 2007/66/EC also introduces some new practical issues such as the introduction of a new form, the so-called Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency (VEAT) notice, which allows contracting authorities to avoid ineffectiveness of the contract based on failure to advertise by giving the required transparency. This type of document will generally be associated to the award procedure of a contract without prior publication of a contract notice or the negotiated without a call for competition procedure.

In addition to improving access to information concerning Community public procurement, the implementation of Directive 2007/66/EC will also have some practical implications, providing new filtering options for the information tools which allow Euroalert.net users to publish EU procurement notices in any website, allowing them to publish these type of notices automatically in their sites.

We have already mentioned in several occasions the difficulties that many EU companies face when taking part in public procurement market. These barriers to access public procurement market, which are even being considered under the scope of the new European Innovation Plan, burden very specially small but very innovative companies, as it is considered that promoting innovation by public procurement could be a good contribution to rationalize public expenses. This is one of the reasons why Euroalert.net keeps its commitment to continue to facilitate access to information about public procurement opportunities in the European Union for all interested public.

We will keep you posted on any new feature which comes up to improve Euroalert.net tools, as well as any new possibility that new developments on EU public procurement rules may offer for all of you.