Representatives of the Public Procurement Office participated in the Subcommittee on Internal Market and Competition, held in a hybrid format on 9 March 2023 in Belgrade, at the Palace “Serbia.”
At the Subcommittee meeting, contributions prepared by the competent public administration bodies were presented to the representatives of the European Commission on the following topics: 1) Protection and enforcement of intellectual, industrial, and commercial property rights; 2) Public procurement; 3) Right of establishment and freedom to provide services; 4) Banking, insurance, and other financial services; 5) Company law, accounting, and auditing; 6) Public health and consumer protection; 7) Competition policy.
In accordance with its mandate, the Public Procurement Office reported in writing to the European Commission on the latest developments regarding:
- Alignment of legislation with the 2014 EU Directives on public procurement, including amendments to the Law on Public-Private Partnerships and Concessions;
- Exemptions from the application of the Public Procurement Law, including the type and value of exemptions;
- Use of the most economically advantageous tender criterion;
- Experience with the electronic public procurement system in Serbia;
- Implementation of the Public Procurement Development Programme in the Republic of Serbia for the period 2019–2023, and the action plans for 2022 and 2023;
- Administrative capacities of the Public Procurement Office;
- Capacity building and organization of trainings for stakeholders at all levels, including the strengthening of institutions, contracting authorities, and bidders;
- Measures to strengthen control mechanisms in public procurement, including monitoring and increased transparency in the contract execution phase, as well as systematic risk assessment with priority given to controls in sensitive sectors and procedures;
- Monitoring of the implementation of the Public Procurement Law, including findings and key results from the latest annual monitoring report;
- Capacities for preventing and combating corruption and conflicts of interest at central and local levels;
- Increase in the total value of exempted procurements from 2020 to 2021;
- Competition in public procurement, the average number of bids, the share of procedures with only one submitted bid, and measures taken to enhance competition.
During the meeting, a more detailed discussion was held on the following:
- The dynamics and content of planned amendments to the Public Procurement Law;
- • The method of monitoring and reporting on projects exempted from the application of the Public Procurement Law;
- • Specific measures taken to increase the use of the most economically advantageous tender criterion;
- • Specific measures taken to reduce the number of public procurement procedures with only one bid submitted, and to improve competition in procurement procedures in general.
