The European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) was kind enough to invite me to take part in a lunchtime roundtable on February 27th to discuss the report by the European Court of Auditors on EU public procurement. The event is online and free as well. I am looking forward to
Ventilator Challenge UK
The UK's purchase of ventilators for the Covid pandemic is once more on the news. It seems a number of units purchased by the UK are now being sold at a fraction of the price via online auctions. Jo Maughan from the Good Law Project is quoted saying
hose of you who know the blog well will have noticed a change on the blog's layout since earlier this week. I decided to move the hosting from Squarespace to Ghost and start a rethink about what I want to do with the blog going forward. The move
Public Procurement
Over the weekend it was news in Portugal that the tender for 117 trains had been challenged in court by CAF and Stadler, two of the economic operators which presented themselves. In and of itself, this is unsurprising since by default most tenders in Portugal are challenged in the courts
Public Procurement
The European Court of Auditors published yesterday its report on EU public procurement between 2011 and 2021, looking into the competition for public contracts covered by EU rules. Frankly, it makes for grim reading: “Overall, we conclude that the level of competition for public contracts to deliver works, goods and
Public Procurement
As promised, you can find the (edited) slide deck for my workshop on sustainability in public procurement here. They have been edited to make a bit more sense by themselves and a I also took out a couple of slides pertaining to a work-in-progress from colleagues at CBS. It went
Public Procurement
This coming Thursday I will be doing a workshop at the Lisbon Environmental Law cluster from the University of Lisbon. It will be a homecoming of sorts for me as it is the first time I will be delivering a session in person at my alma mater exactly 20 years
Public Procurement
With today's announcement of his resignation on the back of a corruption probe, the time of Antonio Costa as Portuguese Prime-Minister reached its end. I think it is appropriate to look into his legacy of 8 years as PM in the field of public procurement. The transposition of
Public Procurement
Back in 2020 (and 2021) I went out on a limb stating that when it come down to the pandemic preparation in early 2020, ie before March 23rd the UK government did not take the risk of Covid seriously enough and did not act when it should. This was (and
Public Procurement
After a long gestation period the UK Procurement Bill has finally reached the end of its legislative process. The Bill has now received Royal Assent, the final hurdle to become law, in this case the Procurement Act. It did so in the proverbial nick of time bearing in mind that
Public Procurement
Labour announced at its conference last week it was considering creating a watchdog to deal with the allegations of corruption connected with Covid support schemes and contracts. In addition it seems Labour also wants to reform the debarment and exclusion grounds for participation in public procurement. Whereas I am not
Public Procurement
Tomorrow I will be participating in the 2023 EPCO public procurement conference, sadly not in person but only online. The title of my presentation is "The limited scope for using blockchain and smart contracts in public procurement" and it is an evolution of my paper from last year