Quite recently, a Romanian government emergency ordinance regarding certain amendments to Romania’s public procurement regime (“GEO 45/2018”) has been approved and gazetted.
Essentially, GEO 45/2018 amended and supplemented four laws and two government emergency ordinances as follows:
- Law no. 98/2016 on public procurement;
- Law no. 99/2016 on sectoral procurement;
- Law no. 100/2016 on concessions of works and concessions of services;
- Law no. 101/2016 on remedies and appeals;
- Government Emergency Ordinance no. 13/2015 regarding the establishment, organization and functioning of the National Agency for Public Procurement; and
- Government Emergency Ordinance no. 98/2017 on the ex-ante control function of procurement procedure/public procurement framework agreements, sectoral framework contracts/agreements and works concession and service concession contracts.
Motivation for such an adoption by emergency procedure includes Romania’s present focus on improving its absorpiton rate of EU structural funds, which necessitates greater flexibility in terms of public procurement.
Changes include changes to: (i) threshold requirements in order to create greater versatility in awarding public procurement contracts outside the mandatory public tender procedure; (ii) requirements for subsequent mandatory public tender requirements associated with subsequent changes to award scopes of work; (iii) acceptable levels of outstanding tax liabilites for bidders; and (iv) contestation periods for contested awards along with bond requirements for plaintiffs in order to deter frivilous claims.