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.

Art. 76.2 provides in fact that “…Member States may also provide that the choice of the service provider shall be made on the basis of the most economically advantageous tender, taking into account quality and sustainability criteria for social services”.
 
To conclude everything depends on how member states are going to transpose the directive. Our conclusion is that the directive contains opportunities for the social sector, but also some risks depending on the transposition and interpretation that is given to some provisions. This is why next year, once the directive is adopted, we will work with our members to provide guidelines to governments in view of a positive transposition.