Progress in the use of public procurement to achieve social objectives

On December 18 the Parliament’s Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection adopted its report the public procurement directive. We are generally satisfied with the vote, as it shows some progress towards:

  • a better recognition of the specific characteristics of social and health services, which means simplified rules, a higher threshold (increased from 500.000€ to 750.000€) and specific provisions more adapted to the nature of these services (such as quality, affordability, accessibility, continuity, involvement and empowerment of users)
  • a better use of public procurement to achieve social and other societal goals.

In particular, we would like to point out the following achievements which are in line with our demands:

  • we called for the abolition of the lowest cost as award criteria for social services and other services directly provided to the person and for making quality a mandatory element in the award criteria for contracts concerning those services; the vote confirms the abolition of the lowest cost for the award of all public procurement procedures and sets out the obligation for member states to ensure that the choice of the service provider for the provision of social services takes into account quality and sustainability criteria
  • we asked to explicitly recognise the alternatives to public procurement in the provision of social services: a specific article – art. 1 – has been included to clarify that the directive does not put in question the right of public authorities to provide services themselves (in compliance with Protocol 26 and art. 14 TFEU); a recital – 3 b – has been added to state that the directive does not deal with the liberalisation of services of general economic interest, that member states are free to organise the provision of compulsory social services and other services as services of general economic interest or as non-economic services of general interest; non-economic services of general interest fall outside the scope of the directive
  • we called for the exclusion of compulsory social security systems from the scope of the directive: the new article 1 specifies that the directive does not affect the way in which the member states organise their social security legislation.