National public procurement strategy to be carried out by June 2015

The national strategy on public procurement procedures will be completed by June, 2015, along with other four related bills, announced Eugen Teodorovici, the Minister of European Funds, according to Agerpres.

This deadline was agreed with the EU Commission, as starting with 2016, the Romanian Government aims to apply new regulations in this field.

“June is the deadline we committed before the EU Commission to respect for forwarding the Government the national strategy on public procurement, a fundamental document without which the EU Commission might even stop the flow of funds to Romania under all operational programmes,” stated Teodorovici, as per the newswire.

The Minister further explained that in addition to the strategy draft, they will present other four bills that transpose public procurement directions established by the EU into Romania's legislation, bills which will subsequently be released for public debate until the end of 2015, so as the updated legislation be effective as from 2016.

“There are three new EU directives which amend the public procurement legislation and we have decided domestically to introduce four related bills. The first one will concern the regular public procurements, the second will concern the concessions, the third one, the utilities, and the fourth one will be directed to resolve those disputes,” added Eugen Teodorovici.

According to the same source, the head of the Ministry of European Funds emphasized that the most important part of the legislative package consists of guidelines requested for many years by the EU Commission, destined to applicants for a better understanding of the public procurement legislation.

In this context, Teodorovici said that apart from a clear legislation in this field, there is also need of professionals to handle the tender documentations properly and avoid related appeals to be filed later which eventually lead to delays in awarding the public procurement contracts.