IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment

The European Commission is asking the public sector and businesses for their views on an updated version of the 'Common Procurement Vocabulary' (CPV), which is the EU-wide classification system for public procurement contracts.

The CPV helps all EU businesses and SMEs to easily identify public procurement contracts offered by any EU public authority, irrespective of the original language of the tender notice, thereby increasing competition, efficiency and transparency. The updated version of the CPV takes account of recent market developments and new possibilities offered by electronic procurement, such as structuring and analysis of expenditure and compilation of statistics. The results of the consultation, which is in the form of an online questionnaire, will contribute to the final version of the updated CPV.

Internal Market and Services Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said: "The CPV classification system has become a vital day-to-day business tool for companies that supply hospitals, utilities, governments, local councils, railways or universities - to name just some of the vast array of sectors covered by public procurement rules. It boosts cross-border competition for public contracts, brings down language barriers and means better value for money for taxpayers. But the classification isn't set in stone. When market conditions change, the CPV needs to change too. Public authorities now have the opportunity to give us their views and help us ensure that the new classification reflects today's needs."

About the 'Common Procurement Vocabulary'

The CPV helps EU businesses to bypass linguistic barriers when searching for public tenders in their field of interest by providing them with a classification that describes contract types in 20 EU languages. Businesses now need only to insert the relevant CPV code corresponding to their products or services into the Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) database, where all calls for tender in the EU are published: http://ted.publications.eu.int.

About EU public procurement law

EU public procurement law aims to ensure that all European companies have a fair chance to bid for public contracts. Open and transparent tendering procedures mean more competition, stronger safeguards against corruption, better service and value for money for taxpayers and, ultimately, a more competitive Europe. EU public procurement markets are worth over €1 500 billion, more than 16% of total EU GDP. The existing EU public procurement Directives have increased cross-border competition in procurement markets and reduced by around 30% the prices paid by public authorities for goods and services, according to a European Commission working document.

Quelle: Publictechnology, 08.03.2006