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...

States influence markets not just as regulators but also through their purchasing activity. However, governments are implicated in human and labour rights breaches via their purchasing relationships. Such supply chain abuses contradict basic assumptions of the European social model reflected in...

This paper explores some of the legal implications of the territorial extension or extraterritoriality of EU public procurement law through EU trade policy. The paper has the starting position that, with this policy and regulatory approach, the EU pursues two main goals: first, to further global...

In EasyPay and Finance Engineering (C-185/14), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has revisited the concept of undertaking for the purposes of the application of EU competition law. It has clarified the test applicable to economic agents engaging in ‘mixed' economic and...

This chapter assesses the use of public procurement to enforce labour standards from a competition and State aid perspective, and concentrates on the establishment of contract compliance clauses under the rules of Article 26 of Directive 2004/18/EC and Article 70 of Directive 2014/24/EU and in...

This paper provides a critical assessment of the Feasibility study concerning the actual implementation of a joint cross-border procurement procedure by public buyers from different Member States prepared by BBG-SKI for the European Commission. The paper submits that the study provides some...

This chapter takes a comparative view on the rules applicable to the exclusion of economic operators from public procurement procedures covered by the EU rules. It focuses on seven Member States (France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom) and in their law,...