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New Procurement Laws in Romania: A Boost to Large Public Infrastructure Projects?

New Procurement Laws in Romania: A Boost to Large Public Infrastructure Projects?

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Romania is anticipated to be a major beneficiary of the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) and could receive up to EUR 31 billion by 2020.

Improved infrastructure is at the forefront of Romania’s prosperity agenda, and consequently optimizing the award procedures remains a major priority. Foreign investor interest in public tenders for large infrastructure projects (mostly the construction of transport infrastructure) should be stimulated by the implementation of new and improved tendering procedures to make the process more transparent, efficient, and fair.

Until now, the Romanian public procurement regime has been based upon a single main law – Government Emergency Ordinance no. 34/2006 on the award of public procurement contracts, public works and service concession contracts – and secondary legislation related thereto.

The new Romanian public procurement laws of May 2016 mirror the newly reformed European regime by implementing European Directives 2014/23/EU, 2014/24/EU, and 2014/25/EU through the enactment of four separate procurement laws and corresponding secondary legislation, each covering a specific area (i.e.,general public procurement, sector procurement, works and services concessions and remedies, and appeals concerning the award of public procurement contracts). The new laws will apply to all public procurement proceedings initiated after their entry into force and to public procurement contracts concluded after this date.

Large infrastructure projects will benefit from the newly improved regime in a number of areas, including simplified awarding criteria, improved publicity and transparency rules, and above all, more efficient anti-corruption provisions.

The laws provide exhaustive details on the way in which the awarding criteria “best quality-price ratio” or “best report quality-cost” should be applied by the contracting authorities. Moreover, bidders are no longer required to submit all the documents proving their eligibility. Instead, they may rely upon a European Single Procurement Document which will be used for this purpose and only the winning bidder will have to submit the detailed required documents in order to be awarded the public procurement contract.

SEAP – the local electronic system for public acquisitions – remains the only electronic platform for tender publicity purposes, providing the specific standard submission forms and the publication of tender notices in Romania and in the Official Journal of the European Union. Communications between the authorities and the bidders can only be made electronically (i.e., via SEAP or other electronic means of communication), thereby increasing the efficiency of the process.

Corruption in public administration has been described by the European Commission as a “systemic problem” in Romania. Sectors such as construction and infrastructure were among those especially prone to practices jeopardizing the fairness of the tender procedures, with bid rigging and conflicts of interest relatively widespread even in those projects benefiting from EU funding and corresponding control mechanisms.

By Ligia Popescu, Dispute Resolution Coordinator, and Bryan Jardine, Managing Partner, Wolf Theiss Bucharest

This Article was originally published in Issue 3.4 of the CEE Legal Matters Magazine. If you would like to receive a hard copy of the magazine, you can subscribe here.

Romanian Knowledge Partner

Țuca Zbârcea & Asociații is a full-service independent law firm, employing cross-disciplinary teams of lawyers, insolvency practitioners, tax consultants, IP counsellors, economists and staff members. It also operates a secondary law office in Cluj-Napoca (Romania), and has a ‘best-friend’ agreement with a leading law firm in the Republic of Moldova. In addition, thanks to the firm’s dedicated Foreign Desks, the team provides the full range of services to international investors seeking to gain a foothold or expand their existing operations in Romania. Since 2019, the firm and its tax arm are collaborating with Andersen Global in Romania.

Țuca Zbârcea & Asociaţii is providing legal services in every aspect of business, covering all major areas of practice: corporate and M&A; litigation and international arbitration; corporate tax; public procurement; TMT; employment; insurance; banking and finance; capital markets; competition; healthcare and pharmaceutical; energy and natural resources; environmental; intellectual property; real estate; regulatory legal services.

Țuca Zbârcea & Asociaţii is a First-Tier law firm in all international legal directories and a multiple award-winning law firm both locally and internationally. It received the CEE Deal of the Year Award (DOTY Awards 2021) and the Law Firm of the Year Award: Romania (IFLR Europe Awards 2021). 

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