The Head of our Public Procurement & Public Projects team, Senior Associate Kadri Härginen published an article about the due diligence in European Union public procurement law in leading scientific journal on public procurement law – The Public Procurement Law Review.
An article written as part of her doctoral dissertation, Kadri Härginen mostly focused on analysing what is the diligence of a contracting authority and where it comes from, based on the European Court practice.
The background: ECJ (European Court of Justice) urges the EU’s own institutions to be diligent contracting authorities and seeks to clarify what kind of behaviour is and what kind is not appropriate for a diligent supplier. However, the principle of good administration resulting from the practice of the Member States that set them up applies to these EU bodies themselves, from which the ECJ derives a duty of care from the contracting authority in its own procurement. However, the EU Public Procurement Directives do not directly impose such a principle on good administration in the Member States, and in parallel with the application of public procurement rules, the basic principles of their national administrative law must also be observed.
