Public Procurement

COVID-19 and procurement: When it rains, it pours

Pedro Telles

Apr 21, 2020 — 1 min read

If #ventilatorgate was not enough of a procurement problem for the Government, the New York Times published an article last week about the purchase of COVID-19 tests that do not work. These are the famous antibodies tests which would 'soon' be in our hands a few weeks ago.

The piece is scathing and focus on the decision by the Government to pay USD$20M up front for tests it didn't know worked or not. In this particular instance I have more sympathy for the Government.

Whether we like it or not, this is a seller's market so potential buyers have to bend over backwards to meet the seller requirements. And since antibodies tests are brand new, there is no real way to use regular procurement avenues to do this or an expectation the Government should have behaved differently. Mistakes happen and in a crisis, this is the kind of reasonable mistake to expect (at least based on the information available).

Having said this, once more I would like to see some transparency from the Government. This is yet another contract which is not public and the Government has since gone quiet on it since March. There is an obvious question in my mind: What safeguards (if any) were included in the contract in case the tests did not work as supposed?

The procurement Directive(s) is(are) getting reviewed

Last week, in her speech on the political guidelines for her new term as Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen announced the following in relation to public procurement: "We must also make better use of public procurement – which accounts for 14% of EU GDP. A 1% efficiency gain in

New publication availabe

I've just uploaded to SSRN my (draft) entry for the forthcoming Elgar Encyclopedia of EU Law. It's on general principles and here's the abstract: "Public procurement regulation within the EU is subject to a mixture of primary, secondary law and case law. This

Portugal's upcoming procurement law(s) review

A flipside of having commented on the recent Portuguese general election party manifestos is that I now have a record of proposals. None paid much attention to procurement and certainly no one suggested a profound revision of the Public Contracts Code. Fast forward a mere 4 months and that is

The UK General Election manifestos procurement promises: Greens

Out of the manifestos analysed, the Green Party one is by far the shortest. It is unsurprising then that there is not much to be found about procurement in it. The only proposal it contains is that they will campaign to bring the Prompt Payment Code into law and debar

Read more

The procurement Directive(s) is(are) getting reviewed

New publication availabe

Portugal's upcoming procurement law(s) review

The UK General Election manifestos procurement promises: Greens