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The UK’s Green Paper on Post-Brexit Public Procurement Reform: journal article

Transformation or Overcomplication?

Albert Sanchez-Graells

European Procurement & Public Private Partnership Law Review, Volume 16 (2021), Issue 1, Page 4 - 18

In December 2020, seeking to start cashing in on its desired ‘Brexit dividends’, the UK Government published the Green Paper ‘Transforming Public Procurement’. The Green Paper sets out a blueprint for the reform of UK public procurement law that aims to depart from the regulatory baseline of EU law and deliver a much-touted ‘bonfire of procurement red tape’. The Green Paper seeks ‘to speed up and simplify [UK] procurement processes, place value for money at their heart, and unleash opportunities for small businesses, charities and social enterprises to innovate in public service delivery’. The Green Paper aims to do so by creating ‘a progressive, modern regime which can adapt to the fastmoving environment in which business operates’ underpinned by ‘a culture of continuous improvement to support more resilient, diverse and innovative supply chains.’ I argue that the Green Paper has very limited transformative potential and that its proposals merely represent an ‘EU law +’ approach to the regulation of public procurement that would only result in an overcomplicated regulatory infrastructure, additional administrative burdens for both public buyers and economic operators, and tensions and contradictions in the oversight model. I conclude that a substantial rethink is needed if the Green Paper’s goals are to be achieved. Keywords: public procurement; reform; deregulation; green paper; transforming public procurement; Brexit


The Future for Public Sector Procurement Law in the Post-Brexit Period journal article open-access

Miltiades C. Elliotis

European Procurement & Public Private Partnership Law Review, Volume 13 (2018), Issue 2, Page 91 - 102

After the UK’s momentous vote to leave the EU, in June 2016, a significant number of public sector officials, began wondering about the future of public procurement in the UK and in the EU, during the post-Brexit period. The consequences of Brexit in this area, as in many others, are in fact difficult to predict; they depend essentially on future political decisions, particularly on the UK’s relationship with the EU. What is clear is that the current procurement regulations will remain in the UK as they are, during the negotiating period , which will probably last until the end of 2019. How will procurement be regulated after that? Certainly, there will be no change in procurement regulations in the EU. What about the corresponding UK regulations? One realistic possibility is that the UK will negotiate a trade agreement with the EU that covers public procurement. Therefore, this could allow the UK to apply the EU procurement regime exactly as it is now. This means that the UK will leave the EU but still be a party to the European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement. Consequently, there will be no change in the procurement regulations in the UK since in essence the EEA applies the same rules on public procurement as the EU does. A second option is for the UK to negotiate another type of trade arrangement with the EU which would certainly include public procurement provisions and it is possible, that these would be the same as those under EU/EEA rules. A third possibility is that the UK will not conclude any specific trade agreement with the EU but that UK trade will be based simply on commitments under the WTO agreements such as the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT) that currently apply for the UK as part of the EU. A final option is for the UK not to commit to any trade agreements that constrain its strategy for regulating public procurement. This means that with this option it will be difficult to predict the final form of UK public procurement law. All these scenarios are discussed in the present work.

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