Public Contracts Regulation 2015 - Regulation 62

Regulation 62 - Quality assurance standards and environmental management standards

Regulation 62 establishes the rules governing the use of standards in the fields of quality assurance and environmental management that can be used by contracting authorities. There are not many comments to make to this Regulation in addition to the ones already made by Albert.

The main rule contained in this Regulation is that contracting authorities should (preferably) refer to European standards (paragraph 1), although they can also accept certificates from national bodies from other Member States (paragraph 2). In addition, contracting authorities are expected to accept as well documentary evidence from the economic operator instead of the actual certificate under certain circumstances (namely for circumstances outside their control). I agree with Albert's remarks that the scope limitation of the exception may unduly restrict competition, but the fault for this approach lies with the Directive. It will be interesting to see how the restriction is applied in practice, particularly taking into account the limitations on demanding compliance with standards introduced by the Dutch Coffee case (Case C-368/10 Commission v Netherlands) which can perhaps be considered analogous to the issues discussed here.