Irish Regions Office Website

July 01, 2009

Local Service Delivery - Court of Justice Ruling on Tendering and Ireland's Lisbon Guarantees

A Court of Justice decision on 9 June has clarified that delivering public services through cooperation among local authorities/municipalities without private sector involvement does not require the issuing of a call for tender. This relates to a case brought by the European Commission against Germany after four district authorities near Hamburg concluded a 1995 contract with the city of Hamburg relating to collective waste disposal in one of its incineration facilities.

The Commission had argued that the district authorities must be regarded as contracting authorities within the meaning of the public procurement directive (92/50/EEC), that the contract was for profit, and that therefore it required a public tendering procedure. However, the Court of Justice has ruled that the collective approach of the local authorities was established with the aim of ensuring that a necessary public interest task was carried out using their own resources in an appropriate manner and without recourse to outside entities. This ruling means that EU law does not require public authorities to use any particular legal form in order to jointly carry out their public service tasks without this in any way undermining the principal objective of the Community rules on public procurement. The decision is also in line with March's European Charter on Local and Regional Services of General Interest from the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) in that it stresses the primacy of these levels being freely allowed to organise service delivery efficiently and in the interest of citizens and business.

Judgement

CEMR Charter

Coincidentally, Annex 2 of Ireland's recently secured set of guarantees on the Lisbon Treaty (the 'Solemn Declaration on Workers' Rights and Social Policy') formally recognises, for the first time at European Council level, ''as a shared value of the Union, the essential role and the wide discretion of national, regional and local authorities in providing, commissioning and organising services of general economic interest as closely as possible to the needs of the users … [without in any way affecting] the competence of member states to provide, commission and organise noneconomic services of general interest.''

Lisbon Guarantees

Posted by iroronan at July 1, 2009 04:09 PM