Third countries’ reciprocal access to EU public procurement: Detailed appraisal of the European Commission's Impact Assessment

Briefing 22-07-2013

The Ex-ante Impact Assessment Unit of DG Parliamentary Research Services was requested by the INTA and IMCO Committees to provide a detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the European Commission’s Impact Assessment (IA) accompanying the proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing rules on the access of third country goods and services to the European Union’s internal market in public procurement and procedures supporting negotiations on of European Union goods and services to the public procurement markets of third countries.As part of this process, the Unit has commissioned four research papers, drafted by specialist experts, on various aspects of the Commission’s IA. They are authored by: Prof. Dr. Andrea RENDA, CEPS, who addresses the questions put forward by the INTA and IMCO Committees from a methodological point of view. Mr. Máté Péter VINCZE, MSc in Economics, who deals with the questions put forward by the INTA and IMCO committees, with a view to finding answers substantiated inter alia by data-mining in relevant databases. Dr. Pedro TELLES, Bangor University, UK, who focuses on impacts, thresholds and national legislation in respect to SMEs. Professor Dr. Nicola DIMITRI, University of Siena, Italy, who analyses reciprocity and retaliation questions, using a game theory approach. The experts were asked to provide an appraisal of the European Commission’s impact assessment, analysing, commenting and possibly complementing it with regard to eight topics: Openness of EU public procurement market; Potential benefits of market opening; Impact on job creation of the different options; Risk of retaliation and leverage creation; Administrative burden of assessed options; Impact on SMEs; Justification of thresholds; Existing national legislation restricting access to public procurement markets.