Public Procurement Outside EU Directives in Romania: Is Voluntary Compliance Leading to Effectiveness?

Abstract

The development of the PP legal regime in Romania has started in 2006, with the adoption of EGO no. 34/2006 on the awarding of public procurement contracts and on concessions of public works and services, which brought, under the umbrella of a single framework, various dimensions of public procurement, regulated until then by a number of disparate pieces of legislation (electronic procurement, Utilities, military contracts, etc.). Between 1989 and 2006, several subsequent public procurement laws had been enacted – in 1993, in 1999, and in 2001, each of them followed by a host of governmental decisions complementing the framework law. For example, the 1993 law was followed by separate governmental decisions regulating transparency and publicity rules, conditions for granting the internal preference in public procurement, the quantification of contract value, etc. The paper examines the context and the applicable rules to public procurement contracts below the EU thresholds and List B services in Romania. Since the legal regime applicable to below thresholds contracts is relatively similar, the paper assesses the implications of this extension of EU rules to almost all PP contracts, irrespective of thresholds, from a legal and policy standpoint. The paper is based on the analysis of legal regulations, relevant national case law as well as interviews conducted with representatives of the National Authority for Regulating and Monitoring Public Procurement (hereafter NARMPP), the National Council for Solving Legal Disputes (first instance review body in PP matters, hereafter the Council), and contracting authorities.

Keywords: public procurement, European Union, Romania, Below thresholds, legal regime, Public procurement Directives