Write to us: kontakt@stowarzyszeniepzp.pl
Write to us: kontakt@stowarzyszeniepzp.pl
To mark World Competition Day, the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection organized a conference styled “Effective Counteracting Market Conspiracy – Practice and Challenges” on 10 December 2019.
Aldona Kowalczyk, President of the Management Board of the Public Procurement Law Association, was invited by the Chairperson of the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection to attend a discussion panel on “How to eliminate bid rigging. Synergy actions under competition law, public procurement law and criminal law”.
The conference was attended by representatives of the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection and the Public Procurement Office, law enforcement authorities as well as businessmen and lawyers. Foreign experts included representatives of the European Commission, the Czech and the Israeli Competition Authorities.
More information about the conference agenda is available here.
Images received from the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.
The October issue of “Zamówienia Publiczne DORADCA” monthly featured a report from the conference “Grounds for exclusion – practice followed in the EU and EFTA member states and the U.S.” presenting conclusions and selected parts of the report depicting the system of exclusions of contractors from public procurement procedures in Poland compared to the systems binding in other European states. The report was prepared by the Polish Public Procurement Association. The report along with other publications featured in the October issue of the DORADCA monthly will be available in just a few days in the LEGALIS Legal Information System.
On 21 October 2019 Rzeczpospolita daily published an interview with Aldona Kowalczyk, Jan Roliński and Wojciech Hartung, the representatives of the Polish Public Procurement Association.
The interview focused on the genesis and conclusions of the report of the Association presenting the system of exclusions of contractors from the public procurement proceedings in Poland compared to the systems binding in other European states.
With the consent of the speakers, the presentations delivered at the "Grounds for exclusion – application practice in EU/EFTA countries and USA" conference held on 30 September 2019 may be downloaded here:
On 30 September 2019, during the conference "Grounds for exclusion – application practice in EU/EFTA countries and USA" organized by the Public Procurement Law Association (PPLA), Dr hab. Piotr Bogdanowicz and Jan Roliński, representatives of the Management Board of the PPLA, presented a report comparing the systems for the exclusion of contractors from public procurement procedures in Poland and in other European countries.
The report provided a number of topics for discussion during the event. Polish and foreign public procurement experts discussed the differences, similarities and interpretations of provisions on the exclusion of contractors in the EU and domestic laws.
Partners of the conference included: C.H. Beck publishing house, Public Procurement Section of the Warsaw Bar Association and the Chair of European Law at the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Warsaw.
Selected presentations and conference materials will be made available on the PPLA’s website within the next few weeks.
Below is a list of speeches and discussions held during the conference:
The Public Procurement Law Association is pleased to announce that it will host a conference on "Grounds for exclusion – application practice in EU/EFTA countries and USA", on 30 September 2019, in Warsaw.
One of the key points of the conference will be the public unveiling of the Association’s report comparing the systems for the exclusion of contractors from public procurement procedures in Poland and in other European countries.
The conference programme also includes lectures and panels discussions on topics such as the various models of systems for the exclusion of contractors from public procurement procedures, the grounds for the exclusion of contractors and their practical application, as well as the effectiveness of such exclusion systems in the public procurement framework.
Attendees include experts on the theory and practice of public procurement law, including representatives of public authorities, as well as a number of international subject-matter specialists: Prof. Roberto Caranta (University of Turin), Prof. Christopher R. Yukins (George Washington University) and Collin David Swan (World Bank Office of Suspension and Debarment).
The conference will take place at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw, Collegium Iuridicum II building (ul. Lipowa 4, room A.2), and will start at 9:30 am. The full programme can be downloaded here.
The conference will be held in Polish, with simultaneous translation to English.
If you would like to take part in the conference, please complete the online application form (https://forms.gle/AjPjZiNQ1ZPMtxyv5) by 25 September.
Attendance is free of charge, however, due to the limited number of seats only registered attendees will be admitted.
The February issue of the monthly publication “Public Procurement ADVISER” contained an article in which Aldona Kowalczyk, Chairman of the Public Procurement Law Association’s Management Board, shares her first reflections on the draft of the new Public Procurement Law and cites the proposals made by the Association.
The whole article (in Polish) can be found below:
Public Procurement Law Association representatives have taken part in a consensus conference organised by the Ministry of Enterprise and Technology and the Public Procurement Office. The conference, which concerned the draft of the new Public Procurement Law, took place on 13-15 March 2019.
The lively three-day discussion covered, inter alia, exclusion from application of the law, grounds for excluding economic operators from contract award procedures, public contracts and remedies, and conciliation procedures.
The Association was happy to hear that the Ministry of Enterprise and Technology and the Public Procurement Office welcomed the changes to the draft proposed by the Association (the proposals are available here) during the legislative work. The Law is to come into force on 1 January 2020.
On 13 March 2019, the Public Procurement Law Association sent the Ministry of Justice comments on the amendments to art. 305 of the Criminal Code set out in draft amendments to the Criminal Code and certain other acts. The Public Procurement Law Association’s comments and proposals can be found here.
The Public Procurement Law Association also sent the Ministry of Enterprise and Technology and the Public Procurement Office two working documents in connection with the work underway on the new Public Procurement Law as regards compensation in public procurement and conciliation procedures. The full text of the materials can be found at: compensation and conciliation.
We would like to thank all the Association Members who were involved in preparing these documents.
Ten experts, a key systemic change and two hours of lively discussion were involved in the debate on “Revolution in procurement or new same old?”
On 21 February 2019, at the office of the Rzeczpospolita daily newspaper a debate was held on “Revolution in procurement or new same old?” attended by members of the bodies of the Public Procurement Law Association and representatives of the public administration involved in work on the draft of the new Public Procurement Law. Editor Tomasz Pietryga’s guests were Mariusz Haładyj, president of the Office of the General Counsel to the Republic of Poland, Hubert Nowak, President of the Public Procurement Office, Bogdan Artymowicz, Director of the Public Procurement Office Legal Department, Joanna Knapińska, Deputy Director at the Ministry of Enterprise and Technology, and Public Procurement Law Association representatives: Dr Piotr Bogdanowicz, Dr Wojciech Hartung, Aldona Kowalczyk, Mirella Lechna, Jan Roliński and Anna Specht-Schampera. The experts discussed recent systemic changes and attempted to answer the question of whether the proposed provisions meet market needs and to what extent, and how they will affect the market.
The Public Procurement Law Association is playing an active part in public consultations on the draft of the new Public Procurement Law and the debate was an excellent opportunity to put forward the Association’s position on key issues.
A record of the debate is available on Rzeczpospolita’s website.
During public consultations, the Public Procurement Law Association submitted comments on the draft of the Public Procurement Law. The text of the comments and proposals can be found in the file below.
We would like to thank all the Association Members who were involved in the work on this document.
On 23 January, a General Meeting of the Public Procurement Law Association was held. During the Meeting, the authorities of the Association were elected, plans for action in 2019 were discussed, and a summary was made of the Association’s activities in 2018.
Key events in 2018 include:
Today’s issue of Dziennik Gazeta Prawna features an article on financial corrections made by Polish institutions in charge of spending EU funds. Jan Roliński, board member of the Public Procurement Law Association, points to an increased frequency of corrections as well as officiousness and formalism of auditors.
On 27 June 2018, the Management Board of the Public Procurement Law Association presented the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technologies and the Public Procurement Office with its position paper on the selected solutions proposed in the “Outline of the new Public Procurement Law”. The opinion paper is available here.
Comments and suggestions submitted by the Association on 6 June 2018 with regard to means of legal protection, including compensation for entities that sustained damage as a result of a breach of public procurement law, form an integral part of the position paper. The Association’s 6 June 2018 position paper is available here.
The June edition of the “ZAMÓWIENIA PUBLICZNE DORADCA” magazine features an article about the Bill on Public Life Transparency which, if adopted in the proposed wording, will have a substantial impact on the public procurement sector. This publication was prepared on the basis of an opinion paper drafted by the Public Procurement Law Association and presented to the Permanent Committee of the Polish Cabinet. The article was penned by Jan Roliński, member of the Association board.
Full text is available here:
Presentations delivered at the “Competition Law and Public Procurement — Two Sides of the Same Coin” conference held on 12 June 2018 may be downloaded here:
On 18 June 2018, Aldona Kowalczyk and Mirella Lechna in a commentary for Dziennik Gazeta Prawna evaluated the outline of the new Public Procurement Law drafted by the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technologies and the Public Procurement Office. The assumptions made in the proposed regulations, including proposals of changes in the legal remedies available to bidders, are consistent with proposed reforms put forward by our experts.
13 June 2018 the Polish daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna published an article on the international conference titled “Competition Law and Public Procurement — Two Sides of the Same Coin” organized by the Public Procurement Law Association. The article quoted Dr. Wojciech Hartung, Dr. Albert Sánchez Graells and Dr. Igor Nestoruk, who discussed the problems connected with public procurement law tackled at the international event.
The full article is available here:
As mutual relations between competition law and public procurement law become clearer, the two areas cannot be treated separately. Consequently, it is necessary to assess participants of the public procurement market (both contractors and contracting authorities) also from the perspective of the broadly understood competition rules - these are one of the most important proposals that have been formulated in the course of the conference "Competition Law and Public procurement - two sides of the same coin", which took place on 12 June in Warsaw. The conference organized by the Public Procurement Law Association was attended by scientists, experts and practitioners of the public procurement and competition law, both from Poland and abroad (including from Lithuania, Germany and the UK).
The conference “Competition Law and Public Procurement - two sides of the same coin” was held on Tuesday, 12 June. The event was dedicated to distortions of competition in public tenders from the perspective of competition law and public procurement law.
The organizer - the Public Procurement Law Association - invited experts and practitioners from Poland and abroad who work in the field of public procurement law and competition law.
Guests had the opportunity to attend lectures on the distortion of competition due to the behaviour of contracting authorities and contractors, events of abuse of dominant positions on the public procurement market and recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the ‘self-cleaning’ institution. The panel’s participants discussed, among others, how to handle competition breaching behaviour in the course of tender proceedings and how contracting authorities should counteract the abuse of contractual advantage .
Contributions were delivered by Dr Albert Sánchez Graells of Bristol University, Dr Igor B. Nestoruk of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Ms. Irma Urmonaitė, a representative of the Lithuanian Competition Office, Dr Anna Blume Huttenlauch of the German law firm Blomstein and Dr Wojciech Hartung a representative of the Association. Panel discussions were also attended by representatives of state institutions, including among others, Ms. Małgorzata Stręciwilk, President of the Public Procurement Office, Ms. Małgorzata Rakowska, President of the National Appeal Chamber, Ms. Magdalena Grabarczyk, Vice-president of the National Appeals Chamber, Professor Marta Romańska, a judge of the Supreme Court, as well as representatives of the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection and representatives of the contracting authorities and contractors.
Selected power point presentations are available for download here:
The Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technologies in collaboration with the Public Procurement Office developed an outline of the new Public Procurement Law and published it on 6 June 2018. According to the authors, the new statutory act is aimed at improving the quality of public procurement laws.
This has also been the overriding objective of our Association. Since our inception, we have taken up and pursued a number of initiatives to diagnose the condition and quality of public procurement laws in Poland and Europe and have put forward proposals addressing the problems we identified.
The Public Procurement Law Association prepared an expert analysis of selected issues connected with legal remedies which need incorporating into the Polish legal system with a view to enhancing the efficiency of the Polish legal remedies system, in line with review procedure directives.
The analysis was submitted on 8 June 2018 to the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technologies, the Public Procurement Office, the National Appeals Chamber and the Ministry of Justice.
You can read the Association’s position paper here:
Ekspertyza Stowarzyszenia Prawa Zamówień Publicznych
On 16 May 2018 the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered his opinion in case C-124/17, Vossloh Laeis, concerning exclusion of an economic operator due to an executed anti-competitive agreement and the measures the contractor took in an attempt to prevent its exclusion. On 12 June 2018 Dr Roland Stein will talk to us about the concerns surrounding the case at the conference “Competition law and public procurement – two sides of the same coin” organized by the Public Procurement Law Association.
The conference will be attended by, among others, Dr Albert Sanchez-Graells and Irma Urmonaite of the Lithuanian Competition Council.
The conference is aimed at representatives of economic operators and contracting authorities. Persons wishing to attend should send an e-mail to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
The conference organizers will confirm your place at the event. Attendance is free of charge. The detailed program of the conference will be announced soon.
In an interview with Rzeczpospolita, Jan Roliński, member of the SPZP Board, presented comments and concerns in relation to the Public Life Transparency Act and its potential adverse impact on the Public Procurement Law and the public procurement market.
The full interview is available here.
On May 4, 2018 Anna Szymańska and Wojciech Hartung participated, at the invitation of the European Commission, as representatives of the Public Procurement Law Association, in a meeting of representatives of the appeal bodies of first instance in the EU Member States in Malta. During the meeting they discussed the report "The functioning of legal protection measures in EU countries. Key findings". The report met with great interest among the participants and triggered a lively discussion. The report is available here.
The Public Procurement Law Association has presented the results of a questionnaire concerning measures of legal protection enjoyed by contractors in public procurement proceedings. Most of the contractors represented were small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); however responses to the questionnaires were also received from large enterprises. Over half of the respondents indicated that the fee for an appeal to the National Appeals Chamber is appropriate, however, about 40% found it to be too high. As it turns out, this has a direct impact on further actions, as for 40% of respondents the amount of the fee is an obstacle to their filing an appeal. The problem is even more fundamental in the case of appeals against rulings handed down by the National Appeals Chamber filed with the court – for 66% of respondents the amount of the fee prevented them (at least once) from taking advantage of the above remedy. In addition, 66% of contractors also found the fee to be too high. 75% of contractors have not filed a complaint against a ruling of the National Appeals Chamber. As many as 20% of contractors received an advantageous court ruling and yet they were still not awarded the contract. Despite this, none of them have taken any steps in order to obtain compensation from the awarding authority.
The contractors presented very important issues concerning the present appeal system which significantly prevents them from pursuing their rights. The legislator may benefit from the survey’s key conclusions in connection with the pending works on the new public procurement law. The survey shows that for the majority of respondents, including in particular the MSEs, access to the appeal measures is hindered by overly high costs. The question of whether fixed thresholds are really necessary continues to be valid.
In addition, the contractors encountered problems with the application of court rulings by the awarding authorities. The report underlines key problems faced by contractors in the current legal environment and provokes a discussion before the planned legal changes concerning measures of legal protection are enacted.
A file presenting a detailed analysis of the results of the questionnaire is available for download below.
On March 26, 2018, the Board of the Public Procurement Law Association (SPZP) provided the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers with a letter presenting its remarks and concerns regarding the draft bill on transparency in public life and its potentially adverse impact on the Public Procurement Law and the public procurement market.
The Association believes that some of the provisions contained in the draft bill should not be promulgated in their current wording.
A copy of the letter with the Association’s remarks is available here.
The first Annual Meeting of the Public Procurement Law Association members was held in Warsaw on Tuesday, 20 February 2018, at the offices of Kancelaria Wardyński i Wspólnicy sp. k. The meeting was attended by nearly all members and its agenda included such items as summing up and approving the activities of the Association in 2017, adopting amendments to the Association’s Charter and discussing plans for 2018.
Members of the Association also discussed such issues as: (1) procurements below EU thresholds, (2) certain premises for exclusion of certain contractors from public procurement proceedings, (3) certain issues connected with appeals against KIO awards, as well as (4) the bill on Public Life Transparency.
In the course of the ensuing discussions, working teams were set up to develop the Association’s official stance and legislative suggestions with regard to the above.
The European Commission thanked the Public Procurement Law Association for preparing and presenting the report “Report on legal protection systems in EU member states”. Mr. Alvydas Stančikas of the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SME in the European Commission also invited the co-authors of the report: Anna Szymańska, Dr. Piotr Bogdanowicz and Dr. Wojciech Hartung to participate in the next meeting of the working group established by the European Commission, composed of members of appeal bodies of the first instance in EU member states. The meeting will be held on 4 May 2018 in Malta. Representatives of our Association will have an opportunity to present the report and its conclusions.
The January edition of the ‘Monitor Zamówień Publicznych’ gazette features an extensive article discussing the report on the functioning of legal protection measures in EU member states, prepared by members of the Association. We encourage you to read the article here.
We encourage you to take part in our survey (in Polish) on the costs of appealing to the National Appeals Chamber (KIO) and filing complaints against KIO rulings to regional courts in connection with pending procedures for the award of public contracts.
With this survey we hope to see if the currently applicable costs of these remedies are not perhaps excessively prohibitive. We would also like to determine what the market players regard as the most reasonable level of these costs.
The questionnaire and analysis of the responses to it form part of an ongoing project looking into the broader issue of legal protection currently available in the public procurements system. As part of this project, our Association produced a report titled “Functioning of Legal Protection Measures in EU Countries. Key Conclusions” which is available on our website. The report also details conclusions relevant to the situation in Poland.
The review of registration fees charged in appeal procedures before the KIO and when complaints are filed with regional courts against KIO rulings will add to the conclusions summarized in the above report and will be forwarded to the Ministry for Development and the Public Procurement Office, along with proposals for suitable legislative change.
Our project is important considering that work is now underway to draft a new public procurement bill. We hope that the framers of this bill will take into account our proposals regarding legal protection remedies and the fees and charges that go with them, given just how critical these are in the public procurement system.
Please return the completed questionnaire to us by 15 January 2018. The questionnaire is short and you will need just a few minutes to fill it in.
On December 5, 2017, we participated in a ceremony connected with the 10th anniversary of the National Appeals Chamber. The ceremony was attended by representatives of the Board and some members of the Association.
On this occasion the Association sent a letter to the Chairperson of the National Appeals Chamber, Ms. Małgorzata Rakowska.
You can read more about the ceremony (in Polish) here: https://www.uzp.gov.pl/kio/aktualnosci/jubileusz-10-lecia-funkcjonowania-krajowej-izby-odwolawczej
A presentation on the review system in Poland and other EU member states delivered in Warsaw by Dr. Aleksandra Sołtysińska during a debate held by the SPZP Association on 28 September 2017 is available here. The debate concerned the functioning of legal protection measures in public procurement projects.
