Procurement activities conducted by the public buyer are very relevant for the proper working of the markets. Hence, the market activities of the public buyer should comply with the requirements of competition law - ie should not restrict or distort competitive outcomes derived from free market...

Block exemption regulations (BER) survived the modernisation of EC competition law. According to the European Commission and some commentators, BER have a major role to play in the system instituted by Regulation 1/2003. Others are more critical and consider that BER are hard to nest within the...

This paper focuses on the treatment of public procurement activities under EC competition law. After briefly outlining the competition economics of public procurement, the paper shows the perceived shortcomings of current EC competition rules and case-law to effectively tackle publicly-generated...

The procurement function is not well-placed to act as a two-sided gatekeeper and thus unable to effectively ‘regulate by contract’ the behaviour of the public entities seeking to adopt digital technologies and technology providers offering to deliver them. Additionally, given in-built...

Almost a year ago, and after substantial debate and a long legislative process, the reform of Spanish competition regulation was completed. The new Competition Act, which came into force on September 1, 2007, supersedes the previous Act of 1989 and significantly transforms the Spanish system for...

This chapter revisits the interaction between the EU rules on State aid and on public procurement. It probes the standard presumption that compliance with EU procurement rules excludes the existence of State aid because public tenders are apt to replicate market conditions and thus suppress any...

In this case comment, I explore the two EFTA Court Judgments in the Fosen-Linjen saga and their opposing views on the interaction between EU/EEA rules on procurement remedies and the more general principle of State liability for breaches of EU/EEA law. I review the case law of the Court of...

The EFTA Court adopted two recent Judgments on the liability thresholds for damages claims for breaches of EU/EEA public procurement law. In Fosen-Linjen I, it followed the so-called separation thesis of procurement damages and State aid liability and found that ‘A simple breach of public...

This paper explores three of the challenges that public buyers face when designing public tenders to support the delivery of smart urban mobility initiatives and when supervising the execution of the relevant contracts. First, the paper covers emerging issues around access and reuse of transport...

This paper takes the dearth of quality procurement data as an empirical point of departure to assess emerging regulatory trends in data-driven and digital public procurement governance and, in particular, the European Commission's ambition for the single digital procurement market. It resorts to...