Kai Hooghoff, Till Wiesner

European Procurement & Public Private Partnership Law Review, Volume 17 (2022), Issue 2, Page 118 - 126

The Competition Register for Public Procurement has been put into operation at the Bundeskartellamt in Germany. The Competition Register centrally and electronically provides public contracting entities with comprehensive information on possible grounds for excluding an undertaking from a specific award procedure for having engaged in economic misconduct. A central access point to such information had previously not been available in Germany. The Competition Register closes this information gap and allows public contracting entities to make an informed decision when assessing whether grounds for exclusion exist. The Competition Register also opens up the possibility for undertakings to have their self-cleaning measures checked by a central body. If the Bundeskartellamt deems the requirements for self-cleaning to have been fulfilled, the undertaking’s entry is deleted from the register. This decision is binding on all contracting authorities in Germany, meaning the undertaking in question may then no longer be excluded from procurement procedures. The Bundeskartellamt has published Guidelines and a Practical Guide on self-cleaning and the procedure for the deletion of an entry. Keywords: Competition Register; self-cleaning; grounds for exclusion; compliance

Aldona Kowalczyk, Aleksandra Sołtysińska

European Procurement & Public Private Partnership Law Review, Volume 16 (2021), Issue 3, Page 181 - 192

The concept of self-cleaning was introduced into Polish and EU public procurement law relatively recently though, earlier, many EU Member States and international institutions saw the need to allow errant contractors to show contrition and goodwill by adopting voluntary remedial measures. Numerous doubts attach to specific remedial measures, timeframes and documents needed for a contractor’s recovery of good standing, and to contractors participating in several tenders simultaneously. This article seeks to both propose the imposition of some sort of order on the self-cleaning regime and respond to issues arising in everyday practice and jurisprudence. Keywords: public procurement, self-cleaning, exclusion grounds

Sarah Schoenmaekers

European Procurement & Public Private Partnership Law Review, Volume 13 (2018), Issue 1, Page 3 - 17

Leniency policies within the framework of competition law make it possible for companies involved in a bid rigging cartel to obtain either total immunity or a reduction of fines. Such policies have proven to be very successful as most cartels that have been detected in the EU were revealed by a cartel member applying voluntarily for leniency. While leniency policies in the course of competition law are also very successful in the United States, self-cleaning possibilities within the framework of public procurement law, such as voluntary disclose of wrongdoings, exist as well but have been sparingly used by firms and individuals involved in misconduct. To overcome the lack of incentive effects, the US Federal Acquisition Regulation was revised in 2008 so that firms and individuals face the risk of suspension or debarment not only for misconduct itself, but also for the failure to report such misconduct. A system of mandatory disclose of information was hence introduced. By studying the underlying rationale of leniency and self-cleaning policies and by comparing the EU and US system of self-cleaning, this articles tries to explain the level of success of leniency programmes vis-à-vis incentive-based self-cleaning policies and tries to establish whether the EU’s self-cleaning policy as codified in Directive 2014/24/EU will be effective to increase integrity in public procurement.