Public procurement and social services: half victory?
In the last weeks we discussed a lot about public procurement and social services: during our Working Group on Services of General Interest on September 24 2013, in the Annual Conference of our member Workability Europe and finally in a conference on sustainable public procurement in European Healthcare organised by Health Care Without Harm.
At the end of June political declarations from the Irish Presidency and the European Parliament were made to inform that the negotiations between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission had been concluded. Many statements and press releases circulated highlighted that tenders could no longer be awarded on the basis only of the lowest price. The abolition of the lowest cost as an award criterion (in particular for procedures concerning social and health services) has been an essential demand from Social Platform and all our members that actively advocated on public procurement.
At the beginning of September, the Parliament's Committee on Internal Market endorsed the text agreed during the trilogue negotiations. At Social Platform we have started analysing the text which is now available on the web site of the Parliament.
The overall assessment of the directive that will soon be adopted is positive. However, some provisions which are key for social and health services, are not very clear or give room for very different interpretations. For example, it was said that the lowest price / cost had been abolished, but if you look carefully at the text, you can still find it: in fact art. 66.2 allows member states to restrict the use of price or cost only to certain types of contracts. The same can be said for the equivalent provision that is applicable to social, health and other services provided directly to the person.