The Guardian published an article yesterday claiming that Albania created an AI 'minister' that would be responsible for public procurement in the country. The logic behind this idea is to make Albania "a country where public tenders are 100% free of corruption" in the words of
Yesterday, the 140 year old Gloria funicular crashed into a building killing at least 16 people and injuring 21 more. The funiculars in Lisbon had operated for almost 1.5 centuries without any loss of life. Questions will be asked about the accident reasons and what was behind it. Finding
I received an email earlier this morning informing me of Chris Bovis passing and I am taking it as an opportunity to reflect on my memories with him. To me he was always generous and gracious and I remain grateful for his help and encouragement over the years. My first
I have a new paper out on electronic public procurement in the EU, focused on the failures of the current legislative framework with some ideas of what should be done in the upcoming revision of the procurement Directives. Here's the abstract: This paper critiques the EU’s electronic
The Danish EU Presidency has put out its programme for the upcoming semester when Denmark will hold the presidency of the Council of the European Union. The programme is called "A strong Europe in a changing world" but when it comes down to public procurement we are not
I have just uploaded to SSRN a new working paper on the failure of the successive rounds of Directives in solving the direct cross-border issue. In short, home bias is as almost as present today as it was in the 1960s. For this one I dabbed a bit outside the
The European Commission put out last week a non-paper on the interpretation and application of the Kolin and Qingdao cases for economic operators coming from third countries. This is a fairly cautious document and probably the most the Commission can do at the moment and in this Q&A
Earlier this week the Commission put out a summary of the findings on the public procurement consultation for the revision of the procurement Directives. Albert has a great entry on the findings of the consultation but I will be taking a different view on this one. In total the consultation
PAN (Greens/EFA) Of all parties represented in the Portuguese Parliament, PAN is the smallest and the only party with a proper, thoughtful set of proposals for public procurement. For the most part they are detailed and up to the point. It is a shame the other parties have not
Livre (Greens/European Free Alliance) Back in 2024, Livre had one of the most compelling set of policy proposals for public procurement. Thorough and detailed, unlike those from the larger parties. For the upcoming general election, however, Livre has decided not to add any new ideas for public procurement opting
A couple of days ago I was contacted by Joren Vuylsteke, a PhD candidate at KU Leuven. He was wondering what had happened with the Portuguese train tender that garnered so much attention a couple of years ago. Regarding that one, well, nothing has happened. We still do not have
Iniciativa Liberal (ALDE): When it comes down to public procurement, the liberal party is the only one arguing for a root and branch reform of the Public Contracts Code. They correctly point out the salami slicing of accountability and guard rail features that were included in the legislation and were