JJUA55255U International Trade and Public Procurement Law - NOTE: the course is cancelled in the autumn semester 2019

Public procurement law regulates purchasing of governments and public and private utilities from private companies. As a student you will learn how to advise both contracting entities and suppliers on all aspects of public procurement law at all stages of public tender procedures leading to conclusion of a public contract.

The relevance of this are of law is undeniable: the global value of public procurement spending is enormous, just the OECD countries alone spend a total of €1000 billion per year. In the EU over 250 000 public authorities each year spend around 14% of GDP on the purchase of services, works and supplies. National courts and Complaints Boards deal with thousands of procurement cases every year.

Consequently, as a highly dynamic area of law, where the amount of the case-law and procurement rules constantly increases and develops great care must be taken when drafting tender conditions, tender offers and the public contract itself.

Public procurement is important for international trade and a crucial economic factor in any domestic system. This course covers the public procurement law of the three most prominent international public procurement regimes: the European Union (EU), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the United Nations International Commission for Trade Law (UNCITRAL). The disscussions will also be substituted by analyse of international trading agreemends such as CETA – EU and Canada Trade Agreement.

The course will look at the EU public procurement law comprising of provisions of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), a set of secondary instruments, a substantial body of case law, and a number of soft law instruments. EU public procurement law will be put in its international context through its interaction with the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) of the WTO. EU and GPA rules will be compared with those of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement.

Contents of the course:

• Aims, objectives of EU public procurement regulation, the GPA, the UNCITRAL Model Law and its field of application; 
• Requirement of the TFEU regarding public procurement, the public procurement process according to the EU Public Procurement Directive, the GPA, the UNCITRAL Model Law: procedures, publication, specifications, qualification, award criteria;
• Corruption in public procurement;
• Technology and innovation in public procurement;
• Horizontal policies and procurement (social, environmental, industrial objectives);
• Review and Remedies under the EU, GPA, and UNCITRAL regimes;