The influence of a new public procurement directive on SME’s

Since 28th March 2014 a new public procurement directive is introduced by the EU. This directive aims to improve the winning chances SME’s have at public tenders. To evaluate the past position SME’s had in the public procurement process points of critique SME’s have on public procurement were assembled and sorted on the frequency they were found. 148 different points of critique were found from which the 15 most prominent points of critique such as: public organizations use disproportionate selection criteria and demands, or they disproportionally cluster assignments, etc. These critiques were evaluated against the Dutch public procurement law 2012 and the new European public procurement directive (2014/24/EU). The Dutch public procurement law 2012 gives much more uniformity and form to not only the rules above, but also below the European threshold especially promoting the proportionality principle. The European public procurement directive seems to focus even more on improving the position of SME’s in public tenders than the Dutch law does. In conclusion, the position of SME’s will generally be improved by the implementation of the new European directive to the extent that: assignments are encouraged to be split in parts, information will be more widely accessible, subcontractors can be paid directly by the public organization and SME’s will be encouraged to participate in public tenders. A disadvantage might be that by implementing social requirements into the tenders SME’s will unintentionally be discouraged to participate.