Public procurement: services, supply and public work contracts (amend. Directives 92/50/EEC, 93/36/EEC, 93/37/EEC)

Commissioner Monti explained why he could not agree with Parliament’s position in all the cases where the amendments tabled diverged from the common position. This was because these amendments would either call into question the structure and logical basis of the Community arrangements or would be too mutually contradictory. However, he was prepared to accept Amendment No 3 relating to the inclusion of the German Ministry of Transport in the list of central procurement agencies. In principle he was also favourable to Amendment No 2 which, in the form of a recital, aimed to promote access by SMEs to public contracts by providing them with appropriate training and information materials. As regards the ‘technical dialogue’, the Commissioner rejected the two amendments (Nos 1 and 4) as these tackled this issue in an inconsistent manner. He considered that the common position adopted an intermediate solution in between the irreconcilable texts of the two proposed amendments and specifically allowed a certain amount of consistency to be maintained between the texts of the four directives on the sectors in question.