Third-country public procurement markets : access to special fields, Utilities direct. 93/38/EEC. 1997 3rd report

Withoput debate, the European Parliament adopted the report by Werner Langen (PPE,DE), which welcomes the third Commission report concerning negotiations regarding access to third country public procurement markets in the fields covered by the Utilities directive (93/38/EC). The Parliament proposes that WTO members with observer status such as Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Iceland, Panama, Poland and Turkey be involved in the negotiations to a greater extent. It is unhappy that, with respect to individual contracting parties, application of the GPA to date has been very varied, and calls for the harmonisation of threshold levels throughout the GPA area as soon as possible, with a corresponding adjustment of those applied in the EU. The Parliament calls on the Commission to submit in 1999, in addition to the report on the state of negotiations on access to public procurement markets in third countries, reports on actual access by European firms to both third-country and European procurement markets.�