AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
AWARENESS AND PERCEPTION OF MODERNIZED ELECTRONIC PUBLIC PROCUREMENT –
CZECH CASE STUDY
a
RADKA MACGREGOR PELIKÁNOVÁ,
b
EVA DANIELA
CVIK
Metropolitan University Prague, Dubečská 900/10, 100 00
Prague 10, Czech Republic
email:
a
radkamacgregor@yahoo.com,
b
ruzickovaadvokat@gmail.com
This research and resulting contribution were funded by Czech Science Foundation,
grant number GA ČR No. 17-11867S “Comparison of the interaction between the law
against unfair competition and intellectual property law, and its consequences in the
central European context.”
Abstract: In 2014, the EU enacted the Investment Plan for Europe to simplify public
procurement, to support access to public procurement and to consider social and
environmental criteria as well as the eIDAS Regulation. In 2017, the European
Commission launched an Initiative for a more effective, efficient and sustainable
public procurement on the single internal market. The aim of this paper is to assess the
awareness and perception of the modernized electronic public procurement, i.e. to
analyze the roots and situations across the EU as, so far, reported, and to discuss and
perform a pioneering Czech case study based on questionnaire investigation focusing
on three hypotheses. The presented data and arguments point to a potential which is,
due to the reduced transparency and awareness, as yet underdeveloped.
Keywords: Public procurement, Single internal market, competition, Investment Plan
for Europe.
1 Introduction
The EU is the latest stage of modern European integration
(MacGregor Pelikánová, 2012 & 2013) dominated by the four
freedoms, the single internal market, digitalization and other
mature society factors (Floridi, 2016) including the (so far
unsuccessful) ambition to become the world competitiveness
leader (MacGregor Pelikánová, 2017). Its strategy is set for each
decade and currently is ending the Europe 2020, i.e. COM
(2010) 2020 Communication from the Commission Europe 2020
– A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth (EC,
2010).
For Europe 2020, definitely important is the fact that a
substantial part of the public investment in the EU is done by
public procurement. The total amount spent via public
procurement exceeds EUR 2 trillion, i.e. oscillates around 15%
of EU GDP (EC, 2017). This makes the need for a proper public
procurement regime self-explanatory. Therefore, the EU requires
all public contracts, above a certain threshold, to be processed by
public procurement while observing principles of transparency,
equal treatment and non-discrimination.
In 2014, President-elect Jean-Claude Juncker, in his strategic
speech ‘Setting Europe in Motion’ made it clear that the EU
needs more synergy in public procurement and specifically
stated:”In times of scarce resources, we need to match ambitions
with resources to avoid duplication of programs. More than 80%
of investment in defense equipment is still spent nationally today
in the EU. More cooperation in defense procurement is therefore
the call of the day, and if only for fiscal reasons.” (Juncker,
2014). Thereafter, the European Parliament and European
Council have enacted a collection of measures under the
umbrella of the Investment Plan for Europe: Getting Europe
Investing Again, aka the Juncker Plan (“Investment Plan for
Europe”) in the hope of making the investment in the EU more
effective, efficient and sustainable and consequently to support
the economic growth in the EU and in EU member states
(Radulescu et al., 2018). The three objectives of the Investment
Plan for Europe are: (i) to remove obstacles to investment, (ii) to
provide visibility and technical assistance to investment projects,
and (iii) to make a smarter use of financial resources (EC, 2014).
The pillars of the Investment Plan for Europe are the European
Fund for Strategic Investments, the European Investment
Advisory Hub and the European Investment Project Portal, and
the Project for improvement of the business environment. With
respect to public procurement, the Investment Plan for Europe
basically simplifies the EU public procurement legislation,
supports access to public procurement and considers social and
environmental criteria (Hochman et al., 2015). Rather than
awarding a contract only on the basis of the best price,
authorities are encouraged to integrate qualitative criteria,
demand innovative, energy saving solutions or insist on
sustainable and socially inclusive approaches (EC, 2014). In
sum, this should contribute towards economic growth (
Terzić,
2017) as well as to corporate social responsibility („CSR“)
(MacGregor Pelikánová, 2019a, Pakšová, 2016, Jindrichovska et
al., 2019).
In 2017, the European Commission put forward an initiative to
carry out procurement more efficiently and in a sustainable
manner (MacGregor Pelikánová, 2019a), while making full use
of digital technologies (MacGregor Pelikánová, 2019b) to
simplify and accelerate procedures under the name ‘Increasing
the impact of public investment through efficient and
professional procurement’ (“Initiative”) (EC, 2017). The
Initiative was a reaction to the Investment Plan for Europe and
its drive to support the economic development and the
reinforcement of the single internal market. The Initiative
defines six priority axis for the fulfillment of the Investment Plan
for Europe and in particular addresses the importance of public
procurement in EU member states and the fact that the selected
providers are almost always from the same EU member state as
the public authority. The not fully open, effective and efficient
competition in this arena represents one of the obstacles for the
complete single internal market. Therefore, it is necessary to
launch measures and instruments making sure that subjects from
all EU member states can participate in public procurement in
each and every EU member state and this pursuant to non-
discriminatory conditions. The Investment Plan for Europe and
Initiative should lead to the increase of the competitiveness of
European businesses, to the elimination of discrimination
between competitors and development of the effectiveness,
efficiency and sustainability of the competition (Damro, 2012).
All public procurements in the EU must be done in compliance
with principles set by the EU law and with the quartet of
freedoms. Public procurement calls, proceedings and procedures
must satisfy competition requirements, trustworthiness,
effectiveness and efficiency. Due to the digitalization and digital
single internal market, the electronic communication and other
digital aspects need to be properly addressed by public
procurement. Consequently, the public procurement policies and
legislation overlap with the drive for the intellectual property and
digitalization (Vivant, 2016), such as the Electronic
IDentification, Authentication and trust Services (“eIDAS”) and
GDPR setting (MacGregor Pelikánová & Cvik, 2018). Namely,
eIDAS is a standardized system of electronic identification and
trust services for electronic transactions in the internal single
market, which was created by EU Regulation 910/2014 of 23
July 2014 on electronic identification and trust services for
electronic transactions in the internal market and repealing
Directive 1999/93/EC (“eIDAS Regulation”). The main goal of
the eIDAS Regulation is the increase in the trustworthiness of
electronic communication in the internal single market and to
develop electronic signature, verification and authentication
systems (Ribeiro et al., 2018). The eIDAS Regulation should
provide a common foundation for safe electronic communication
between citizens, businesses and public administration
institutions and make the electronic communications, documents
and signatures equivalent to their hardcopy counterparts. This
should lead to a reinforcement of the effectiveness, efficiency of
public and private on-line services and services for e-business in
the sphere of public procurement and even beyond. Namely, the
eIDAS Regulation imposes the duty to use a higher level of
security during electronic communication and to use appropriate
information systems and information technologies (“IS/IT”)
(Pohulak-Zoledowska, 2016). EU member states have to create a
common framework for such an e-communication which
recognizes electronic identification (“eID”) from other EU
member states and verifies the correctness and security. What is
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