THE COMMISSION ON PROTECTION OF COMPETITION PARTICIPATED IN THE SIXTH SEMINAR OF THE PROJECT FOR DEVELOPING THE COMPETITIVE PROCESS IN PUBLIC PROCUREMENT ORGANIZED BY THE OECD IN ZAGREB, CROATIA
On the 7th and 8th of April, a representative from the Commission participated in the sixth seminar, which is part of the ongoing two-year project: “Fighting bid rigging in public procurement: Improving Compliance and Competition in Public Procurement", organized by the Croatian competition authority. The project is implemented by the Organization for economic development and cooperation (OECD) and is funded by the European Commission through the Technical Support Instrument of DG Reform. It is aimed at the competition authorities of six Member States-Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Croatia. Its main objective is to raise awareness amongst public institutions and the private sector with regards to the substance of bid rigging and the red flags, which can indicate such practices. All of this would improve coordination between all the parties involved in public tenders (procurement officials, competition authorities and businesses).
The guests of the seminar, most of whom were representatives of public contracting authorities from Croatia, were made familiar with the challenges and advances from the recent practice of the Commission in the area of bid rigging. An expert form the Directorate of “Antitrust and concentrations” highlighted the increased cooperation in recent years between the Commission and public buyers as well the efforts of the authority to raise awareness for the substance and indicators, which can lead to this type of infringements of the competition rules. In relation to that, the Commission is in a process of amendment of the Guidelines for fighting bid rigging in public procurement.
The hosts of the event as well as the representatives of the national competition authorities underlined the importance of cooperation between all public institutions in the aim to counter bid rigging practices. In addition, the guests of the workshop were acquainted with the possibilities, which EU law presents for parties who suffered harm as a result of bid rigging cartels and were incentivized to make use of those.
This was the last seminar from the first round of the project. The other two rounds will be conducted in a similar way by organizing workshops in the countries, which are part of the project, but this time the aim would be to raise awareness among non-competition enforcers and the private sector.
More information on the project can be found in the following link: