New law on public procurement: towards greater efficiency?

With a delay of almost 22 months, the Chamber of Deputies has just transposed Directives 2014/24/EU and 2014/25/EU into national law by adopting on 8 February 2018 the Public Procurement Bill N° 6982. This text brings comprehensive reform of the law applicable to public procurement.

The aim is to improve the law of public procurement and to make it a genuine political strategy instrument. In the future, social and environmental criteria will play a greater role in awarding public contracts. In addition, public procurement will be considered as an instrument for innovation.

Thus, the criterion of the most economically advantageous tender is substantially modified, in the sense that price is no longer the only criterion applicable to the awarding of a public contract. This is likely to result in a matching of the price of the offer with the final price of the benefits, so that better budget management should be possible.

In addition, the reform of public procurement law aims at simplifying public procurement and easing the constraints on public purchasers as well as economic operators. One of the goals of the reform is to reduce bureaucratic constraints, which is probably respectable. However, upon reading the bill, it is doubtful whether this objective can actually be achieved.

Finally, the reform of the law applicable to public procurement seeks to better prevent conflicts of interest, favouritism and corruption. It remains to be seen whether the new rules on public procurement will contribute to this.

In conclusion, the reform has taken the right direction, although this legal matter seems only limitatively decomplexified. The many possible procedures, subject to different conditions, maintain the complicated nature of the law applicable to public contracts. For now, it is too early to determine whether the political objectives will be achieved or whether the law on public procurement will need to be reformed again.