Alongside the on-going reform of public procurement, the IMCO committee considered the Commission proposal on concessions contracts. This initiative sought to ensure a more efficient allocation of public money by establishing a single instrument regulating the competitive award of concessions contracts. The proposed rules aimed at increasing legal certainty for public authorities by establishing for the first time EU wide rules to define the notion of risk and affirm important principles, such as free administration and services of general economic interest.
In order to guarantee to businesses effective access to the concessions markets across the EU for both works and services, while also ensuring an overall economic advantage for public authorities, the directive provides that concession award criteria must be objective and that social and environmental considerations should also be taken into account in a determinative fashion.
Council and Parliament agreed to totally exclude the water sector from the new rules. Some other services of a specific nature, such as certain lotteries, civil defence and protection, emergency services performed by non-profit organisations, and media, financial or legal services, were also excluded from the scope of application of the new directive.
The European Commission presented its proposal and the Impact Assessment to the IMCO Members on 25h January 2012, while the whole of the parliamentary works were completed within a period of 2 years: The negotiations were successfully concluded at first reading with the confirmation of the agreement by COREPER I in July 2013 and IMCO endorsement on 5 September 2013. The full modernisation package, including the concessions directive, was adopted by Parliament in a plenary vote on 15 January 2014, and by Council on 11 February 2014. Publication in the official journal is expected to take place on the 18th of March, with the directive entering into force on the 28th of March 2014.
Rapporteur: Philippe Juvin (EPP)
Shadow rapporteurs: Antonio Panzeri (S&D), Cristian Silviu Buşoi (ALDE), Heide Rühle (Greens), Malcolm Harbour / Edvard Kožušník (ECR),
Thomas Händel (GUE), Matteo Salvini (EFD)
Source : © European Union, 2014 - EP