Cross-border e-procurement: the Procure project case

Procure is a European project whose objective is to expand usage of e-tendering platforms. 5 regions take part in this project with the assistance of University of Bremen and the societies Atexo, Sopra Group and Marakanda.

One of the objectives of this project is to find out opportunities to carry out e-procurement between European Members States.

Carry out cross-border public procurement

Analysis of the legal basements

Prior to the realization of the technical tools and prior to their deployment, it seemed important to us to study the European legal framework regarding public procurement, e-procurement and digital signature. This study has been made by the University of Bremen.

At the European level, the European Community constitutive treaty and varied European directives make possible procurement between Members States. Firstly, the treaty introduces the principle of a single market banning any discrimination regarding foreign candidates to a public tender. Secondly, directives concerning public procurement introduce common public processes for procurement above a European threshold for the 27 Members States.

Finally, to carry out cross-border e-procurement, digital signatures use is often compulsory. In this context, European Commission has issued a directive (1) introducing a common framework for digital signature. However, no standard has been defined yet, and thus each Member State remains free to adopt its own standard (regarding the obligation or not to use digital signature, the security level required for the digital signature...).

So, a public buyer can legally accept bids from any economical actor from the European Community but this legal opportunity remains to be concretely possible.

The set-up on a technical infrastructure

In order to promote cross-border public procurement, a technical device has been set up with the objective to increase local public markets at a European scale.

To do so, a common platform gathering tenders advertising published on the local platforms has been developed. This common platform gathers advertising published by the Procure pilot regions: Central Bohemia, Guadeloupe, Brittany, Uddevalla municipality and Piedmont. Burgundy region, the region having initiated the project, will also participate.

Thus, businesses potentially interested can profit from a sole access to the whole public markets in the case public buyers considered that European visibility was necessary. The tender’s documentation can then be withdrawn directly on the local platforms.

In order to make easier the access to public procurement, an email alert service is available on the European platform. Thus, societies can be regularly informed of the new advertising published.(2)

Limits of cross-border procurement

The poor current activity regarding cross-border procurement can be explained by :

• The fact that societies often have branches in each Member States and that theses branches usually bid to public markets for the group,
• The necessity to understand others languages and to be able to produce bids in theses others languages,
• The difficulty to source public markets for medium enterprises potentially interested in cross-border public procurement opportunities.

Furthermore, we observed that public buyers are today not really used to receive bids for foreign candidates and that legal stipulations can slightly differ between Member States regarding foreign candidates’ participation to public markets.(3)

Another issue lies in the non harmonization of digital signatures in the Member States. If 1999/93/EC directive introduces a common framework, it doesn’t define any standard. As a matter of example, a Czech company can’t e-bid to a French public market above the European threshold since any Czech digital signature is accepted by the French Treasure Ministry.

Limits to the development of cross-border public procurement are of two kinds: Cultural (lack of practice, languages issues) and structural (issue of the digital signature).

Next actions planed regarding cross-border procurement in the Procure project framework

In order to develop cross-border procurement, experimentations will be launched from October 2008 in the different pilots of the Procure Project. The pilots will particularly work according 2 axes:

• Firstly, the experimentations will consist in identifying sectors already exporting and potentially interested in public procurement. Are particularly aimed medium enterprises specialized on innovative markets,
• Experimentations will then consist in making local authorities involved in the pilots aware of foreign opportunities for some of their public markets and to encourage them to publish theses markets on the Procure European platform.

Regions will also assist candidates bidding to foreign public markets regarding legal issues.

A new task (T10.4) has been created to bear theses experimentations. Sopra Group will in this context assist pilot regions in:

• Producing an experimentation framework regarding cross-border procurement for the pilot regions,
• Producing promotion supports towards local authorities involved in the pilots and towards societies to present them the experimentations objectives and sequence of events,
• Providing synergies between pilots and making at the end of the project a synthesis of the results reached.

1. Directive 1999/93/EC
2. Companies can choose the frequency of the alerts
3. We can in particular mention issues about “ability to bid certificates” and their recognition at a European level.