LAW 9/2017, OF NOVEMBER 8, OF CONTRACTS OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR
On November 9th, 2017, Law 9/2017 about Contracts of the Public Sector (the “Law 9/2017”) was published in the BOE, through which the European Directives 2014/24 / EU of February 26, 2014 on public procurement and Directive 2014/23 / EU, of February 26, 2014, regarding the awarding of concession contracts are implemented into Spanish law. This law will come into force on March 9, 2018.
The transposition of the Community Law Directives is the starting point of the new Law, which tries to design a more efficient, transparent and comprehensive public procurement system, through which better compliance with the rules is achieved public objectives, both by satisfying the needs of the contracting bodies, and by improving the conditions for access and participation in public tenders by economic operators, as well as by providing better services to users.
Likewise, the new Law seeks to satisfy the need for simplification of procedures with the idea of reducing the administrative burdens of the economic operators involved in this area, thus benefiting the bidders as well as the contracting bodies.
The main novelties of the Law 9/2017 are the following:
- The extension of the subjective scope of application of the Law;
- The inclusion in contracts of social, environmental and innovation and development considerations;
- The incorporation of the regulation of the preliminary consultations of the market;
- The regulation of a simplified procedure;
- The inclusion of new rules aimed at promoting transparency in contracts, irrespective of the rules designed to facilitate the fight against fraud and corruption, for example, by eliminating the assumption of applying the negotiated procedure without advertising because of the amount;
- A new regulation of the figure of the profile of the contracting party, more exhaustive than the one existing up to now;
- The maintenance of the use of the responsible declaration, expanding the spectrum of cases in which it is used and its content is regulated in detail;
- Stake in favor of electronic contracting;
- Measures to support SMEs: measures to simplify the procedure and reduce administrative burdens;
- Disappearance of the figure of the public service management contract and appearance in its place of the new figure of the service concession; and
- New measures to defend competition, such as the obligation to provide the National Commission of Markets and Competition with more information on public procurement.
See full analysis: LAW 9/2017
