Key Issues for Effective Procurement Remedies

Public procurement has been regulated by (then) European Economic Community (EEC) second-ary law since 1971. Substantive EU rules aim at enforcing non-discrimination in the internal market.To this end, they prescribe competitive and transparent award procedures contracting authorities orentities must follow to choose their partner. Remedies for breaches of substantive procurement ruleshave been the object of an early codification in (then) EEC law. The recitals in Directive 89/665/EECclearly state the issue the directive itself is expected to address: existing arrangements at both nationaland Community levels for ensuring their application are not always adequate to ensure compliancewith the relevant Community provisions particularly at a stage when infringements can be corrected.Many remedies, however, are only named without much details being provided on what is requiredat national level. Moreover, in the past few years, the Court of Justice seems to have become morerestrained in adding details to the Remedies Directives, having instead more and more often recourseto the principle of procedural autonomy. This leaves much uncertainty on the standard of reviewrequired or appropriate under the Remedies Directives