CPB-Project: Safeguarding competition and equal access to Central Purchasing Bodies’ agreements

The research project will investigate and analyse whether central purchasing bodies’ agreements are safeguarding the aim of the procurement rules and find new ways of creating competitive and flexible agreements.

Central purchasing bodies (CPBs) conduct procurement procedures on behalf of other contracting authorities. Aggregated procurement can lead to better prices and quality for contracting authorities and ultimately for the tax payers. On top of this, the individual contracting authority will save a significant amount of transaction costs by not conducting procurement procedures themselves. However, this type of purchasing have often preferences for contracts with a single supplier in order to lower transaction costs, and this puts economic operators in a position in which they need to work together in order to be able to bid for the agreement – and such cooperation can be seen as an anticompetitive agreement (Art. 101 TFEU). Other potential negative effects of aggregation are linked to excessive concentration of purchasing power and collusion, as well as a reduction of market access opportunities for SMEs. This research project seeks to clarify the rules and analyse how competition can be ensured.

The project is divided into 4 work packages:

 

 

WP1: CPB perspective: Laying down a comprehensive assessment of CPBs’ types of agreements and their legal set up, including the potential for taking into account environmental and social considerations.

WP1 consist of a PhD project, which aims at locating which agreement is the ideal agreement for specific purchases by CPBs. The research will focus on the legal rules for setting up different types of agreements and analyse how competition and equal treatment can best be ensured in these agreements It will also assess the possibility for taking environmental and social considerations into account, and how this can be done while at the same time maintaining competition and equal access to the agreement.

WP1 also includes a two-day international conference on “CPBs Agreements” and a one-day PhD workshop in extension to the conference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

External Researchers

Funding

Safeguarding competition and equal access to Central Purchasing Bodies’ agreements has received a four year funding of 9,4 mill DKK from Independent Research Fund Denmark (Sapere Aude: DFF-Starting Grant and DFF Inge Lehmann).

Project: Projects: Safeguarding competition and equal access to Central Purchasing Bodies’ agreements & Parallel framework agreements
(Case number: 0167-00031A Sapere Aude & 0167-00032A Inge Lehmann).

Period: 01-01-2021 – 31-12-2024

Contact

Carina Risvig Hamer

PI Professor
Carina Risvig Hamer


South Campus, Building: 6B.3.21
DK 2300 Copenhagen S
Phone: +45 35 33 03 67
Mail: carina.hamer@jur.ku.dk

Past events