Regulated procurement: European Single Procurement Document to simplify the process for suppliers to the public sector
Published on 6th Jan 2016
On 5 January 2016 the European Commission adopted the new European Single Procurement Document (ESPD), which can be used at the selection stage of procurements for public contracts.
The ESPD is an electronic standard document which bidders may submit when tendering for contracts under the Public Contracts Directive (Directive 2014/24EU), as implemented in England and Wales by the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (PCR 2015). The ESPD will enable bidders to state, in one document, that they meet the necessary selection criteria and conditions as required in a pre-qualification questionnaire, and should not be excluded from tendering for a contract.
Contracting authorities will be obliged to accept the ESPD, instead of the various certification regimes that currently apply across different authorities and different member states. The aim is to simplify the process for buyers and suppliers to participate in public procurement procedures, and as a result to facilitate cross-border participation in tenders and also ease the burden on SMEs.
What will this mean for suppliers to the public sector?
The ESPD allows bidders to self-declare electronically that they meet the necessary selection criteria or commercial capability requirements for the contract, and that none of the mandatory or discretionary grounds for exclusion apply.
A key change is that only the winning bidder will (ordinarily) need to submit all of the documents to prove it qualifies for the contract. Contracting authorities will, however, retain the power to require any such documentation at any time during the tender process where this is necessary to ensure the proper conduct of the process.
The ESPD replaces the different eligibility systems used by EU Member States. Currently, requirements are far from uniform across or even within Member States. Some Member States or authorities allow bidders to self-certify that they meet the conditions to participate, whereas others require bidders to provide comprehensive documentation to demonstrate their suitability, financial standing and abilities when they tender. Wide-ranging documentary requirements in the UK, for example, can be a significant burden on SMEs in particular.
As well as easing the burden for bidders within their own member states, the ESPD is also expected to increase cross-border participation in public procurement procedures, as the same form will be used across all Member States.
What happens next?
A standard form of the ESPD is appended to the EU Regulation (2016/7) adopting it (see here). In England and Wales, as the relevant parts of the PCR 2015 are already in force, bidders will be able to use the standard form ESPD from the date on which the Regulation comes into force, 26 January 2016. Member States that have not already done so (the majority, with only England and Wales having transposed so far) have until 18 April 2016 to implement the Public Contracts Directive into national law, after which the ESPD is intended to apply across the EU.
To facilitate its use, the European Commission is currently developing a free, web-based system which can be used by contracting authorities to set out the information that they require bidders to include, and by operators to complete that information.
Eventually, the ESPD will need to be provided in an exclusively electronic form, but Member States can postpone that obligation until 18 October 2018 at the latest (in England and Wales it comes into force on 18 April 2017). Until then, the ESPD can be printed, manually completed, scanned and sent electronically.
New threshold levels for 2016
Along with the ESPD, suppliers and contracting authorities should also be aware that, as of 1 January 2016 new procurement threshold levels apply to the Public Contracts Regulations, the Utilities Contracts Regulations and the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations. The revised financial thresholds, which determine whether the relevant regulations apply, are due to fluctuations in exchange rates over the last two years. The Euro thresholds have reduced slightly whilst the relevant equivalent in GBP have gone down as a result of the strength of the sterling.
The new thresholds are set out here.
