The Public Procurement draft law has been adopted in Parliament!

It’s official. The Public Procurement draft law was adopted by Parliament on 12 May 2016.

With the adoption of this draft law, Belgium tries to meet its obligation to implement the new European Directives 2014/24/EU and 2014/25/EU.

In terms of the content of the draft law, we can already note the following modifications:

• New terminology of the awarding procedures (for example the negotiated procedure with publication will become the “competitive procedure with negotiation” in the classic sectors and the tendering procedure “disappears”);
• Adjustments of the facultative and mandatory exclusion grounds;
• Extension of the possibility to apply the (formerly known) negotiated procedures with or without publication;
• Increase of the threshold to conclude a contract on an accepted invoice (from EUR 8.500 to EUR 30.000).
• Introduction of a new awarding procedure: the innovative partnership.

No less than 87 amendments were deposed in Parliament, but only a few of them were finally adopted. For example:

• The original draft law deals only with the variants and not the options. Amendment n° 53 also integrated the options in the draft law, because of the affiliation between both terms.
• Amendment n° 81 inserted the possibility for the King to constrain the chain of subcontractors, to assure the respect of labour law.
• Following amendment n° 84 the King will be able to determine for which contracts under the European thresholds the Single Procurement Document should be used.

In the following days, the draft law will be ratified and promulgated by the King. By contrast, the entry into force will take place after the adoption of several royal decrees concerning the awarding and execution of the contracts.