Analysing procurement policies from party manifestos on the run up to the Portuguese General Election (III)
Chega (ID)
The far right party manifesto has a few policy proposals for public procurement, mostly the same as last year. Its main novelty here is the protection of national industry against unfair competition and using public procurement to support national companies. How? By privileging them when tendering.
As far as policies go, this one is easy to comment on: this is illegal for contracts above thresholds since EU law applies, and for those below it is illegal as well for those contracts with 'certain cross-border interest.' To this day we are yet to have a more concrete definition and example of what these contracts are.
This proposal is more brazen than others but it is a sign of how the discourse has changed. Once we start talking about industrial policy and how procurement should be used to deliver industrial policy we are 3/4 there to see arguments for our industrial policy, that is using procurement to protect national industries. You have been warned.
They are also putting forward a policy proposal on open data which is a bit odd. Instead of aiming to improve the national public procurement portal, they suggest instead for each Ministry to make its data on procurement procedures available on its own website. If they really want to improve transparency and accountability, then a central repository of this information is the way to go.
Regarding their policies from last year, when first reading the manifesto I thought the infamous idea of 'Portuguese jobs in public works, for Portuguese people' was gone from it, but unfortunately it is not. They still want to prioritise local workers for public works.
From last year they've kept the aim to evaluate and assess PPPs/PFIs, but not much meat on those bones there either, as well as the idea to take into account the lifecycle costs (ie maintenance expenditure) with public works and their potential impact on future budgets. However, this time around they state this responsibility should be passed down to local authorities.
Grade: 1/10