Analysing procurement policies from party manifestos on the run up to the Portuguese General Election (VI)

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 treated procurement policy with similar care and attention. I found 5 main policy proposals worth commenting on.

As with Livre, PAN wants to bar economic operators based on (or with beneficial owners) from tax havens from participating in public procurement. As mentioned there as well, beyond the obvious restriction on creating new exclusion grounds the CJEU in Kolin and Quingdao really left for the Commission the role of determining market access for economic operators based in third countries. Ironically this intervention by the Court gives contracting authorities the power (and responsibility) of making those decisions on a case by case basis. So it is possible that contracting authorities may voluntarily decide to do so...although it is unlikely bearing in mind the litigious culture in Portugal.

Once again they are also proposing for economic operators to disclose their beneficial owners for listing in the national procurement portal and to allow access to the national registry to any EU citizen, something that cuts across judgements from the CJEU about transparency of beneficial ownership registries as I mentioned in the comment to their 2024 manifesto. It is a shame they have not let go of this idea. On this area they are also suggesting an integration between the registry and the public procurement sytems overall so that they are interoperable. I think it is a shame they have limited this idea to only the beneficial ownership instead of actually forcing a discussion about the wider interoperability of administrative data in the context of public procurement.

Their second policy proposal is more along my own perspective. The party suggests that all procurement documents should be made available in the national procurement portal instead of only the contract itself. In addition, they are calling for a red flag mechanism to be included as in Italy to flag up procedures that look to be not as transparent as they should. I am not aware of the details of that Italian feature, but am not against it in principle. Furthermore, their policy suggestion extends to anticorruption programmes for suppliers, limiting non-competitive successive awards to the same supplier (already mandatory in some cases, ie when they go over thresholds) and a black list based on exclusion grounds. I won't repeat myself regarding the latter as it is the ruling coalition is proposing the same and I do not see how it could work in Portugal. Overall, this goes beyond from what is on their 2024 manifesto.

The third proposal in their manifesto is connected with sustainable agriculture, local strategies for food production, short supply chains and "incentivising local authorities to adopt sustainable public procurement solutions." I am not sure if their procurement policy proposal is only pertaining to the wider sustainability angle or instead the localism agenda underlying the idea of short supply chains for food.

PAN wants to expand the implementation of Integrity Pacts in public procurement, particularly for larger public bodies or those at higher risk of corruption. As with last year, Integrity Pacts are not really my specialty and nonetheless I tend to prefer hard law over soft law instruments.

The party is also putting forward a policy for the creation of specialised public procurement sections within the administrative court system. Out of all the parties it is the only recognising that one of the fundamental problems with public procurement is the court system. Unfortunately, without more resources and a reduction in access to the courts the creation of new sections will amount to not much more than re-arranging the proverbial chairs on the Titanic Deck.

Overall, I once more quite liked the proposals from PAN for public procurement despite my reservations about a few. If only all other Portuguese parties took a leaf from this particular playbook...

Grade: 6.5/10