Updated Draft Agreement on the UK's withdrawal from the EU [Public Procurement]

The Commission published on March 19th a revised Draft Agreement on the UK's withdrawal from the EU, conveniently colour coded green, yellow and white to denote different levels of agreement between the parties. Green means the text has been agreed but is still subject to technical legal revision, yellow that the policy objective has been agreed upon but drafting changes are still required and white that no agreement has been reached yet.

As regards public procurement (Arts 71 to 74 of the Draft Agreement), the situation is as follows:

Article 71 - Green

Article 72 - All green except paragraph 2.

Article 73 - Yellow

Article 74 - Green

It seems that in what regards to public procurement, progress is being made in reaching an agreement. No major changes are visible to any of the articles in comparison with the original draft from a few weeks ago. As I said in the meanwhile, I find it odd that EU procurement rules will apply only until the procurement procedure is finalised, but not to the contract performance, thus meaning Articles 70 to 73 of Directive 2014/24/EU won't be applicable. Unfortunately, the draft remains unchanged in this point and the parties have accepted it (Draft Agreement Article 72(1) and (4)).

As for Article 72(2) where no agreement has been reached, I am puzzled as for the reasons why. Since Article 72(1) establishes the application of secondary rules to ongoing public procurement procedures, paragraph 2 only re-iterates the applicability of the principle of non-discrimination to the same set of procedures. That is the logical contextual reading of Articles 72(1) and 71 (which includes the definition of relevant rules). Another reading, however, would allow the extension of the principle of non-discrimination to contracts not covered by Article 71, that is contracts not-covered by the Directives: ie, those today subject only to the (horrible) certain cross-border interest. As I said, my guess is that those have been excluded from the scope of application of the Withdrawal Agreement via Article 71, but perhaps the definition of this scope is where the parties are yet to reach an agreement.

The only area where only policy agreement has been achieved is Article 73 pertaining to the Remedies Directives (Directives 89/665/EEC and 92/13/EEC). This can be understood in the negotiation context of the UK not wanting to be subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice. This is, however, speculation on my part.