In this paper, I reflect about a recent regulatory trend concerning the enforcement of labour standards through contract compliance clauses and other requirements of public contracts tendered under European Union public procurement law. On the back of recent developments in the case law of the European Court of Justice regarding cross-border situations of procurement-based enforcement of labour standards, notably in the re-examination of the Rüffert case in both the Bundesdruckerei and RegioPost cases, I reflect on this phenomenon from the perspective of regulatory substitution. In setting out a basic framework to assess regulatory substitution, I hypothesise that most of the difficulties evidenced by the case law stem from the transfer of labour regulation goals to the public procurement sphere. I then aim to test this hypothesis by means of an analysis of labour policy-oriented mechanisms included in the 2014 revision of the EU public procurement rules. I then go on to critically assess the fitness for purpose of the procurement mechanisms from the perspective of contributing to the enforcement of labour standards. I ultimately conclude that, even though the 2014 Public Procurement Package has galvanised the trend of regulatory substitution whereby employment and social goals have now become part and parcel of public procurement strategy in the EU, a close examination of the legal mechanisms created by Directive 2014/24/EU shows that this regulatory substitution is both limited and highly dependent on the implementation (and investment of significant administrative resources) at Member State level.

Smart procurement aims to leverage public buying power in pursuit of social, environmental and innovation goals. Socially-orientated smart procurement has been a controversial issue under EU law. The extent to which the Court of Justice (ECJ) has supported or rather constrained its development has been intensely debated by academics and practitioners alike. After the slow development of a seemingly permissive approach, the ECJ case law reached an apparent turning point a decade ago in the often criticised judgments in Rüffert and Laval, which left a number of open questions. The more recent judgments in Bundesdruckerei and RegioPost have furthered the ECJ case law on socially orientated smart procurement and aimed to clarify the limits within which Member States can use it to enforce labour standards. This case law opens up additional possibilities, but it also creates legal uncertainty concerning the interaction of the EU rules on the posting of workers, public procurement and fundamental internal market freedoms. These developments have been magnified by the reform of the EU public procurement rules in 2014. This book assesses the limits that the revised EU rules and the more recent ECJ case law impose on socially-orientated smart procurement and, more generally, critically reflects on potential future developments in this area of intersection of several strands of EU economic law.

This book investigates patterns of fragmentation and coherence in the international regulatory architecture of public procurement. In the context of the major international instruments of procurement regulation, the book studies the achievement of social and labour policies, the most controversial and problematic instrumental uses of public procurement practices. This work offers an innovative comparative approach, discussing the ways in which the different international instruments-namely the EU Procurement Directives, the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement, the UNCITRAL Model Law and the World Bank's Procurement Framework-are able to implement labour and social purposes and, at the same time, ensure a regulatory balance with the principles of efficiency and non-discrimination. Scholarly, rigorous and timely, this will be important reading for international trade lawyers and procurement practitioners.

This chapter examines the potential of government procurement as a mechanism for improving job quality and alleviating poverty and proposes ways in which these mechanisms can be strengthened so as to make them more effective. The promotion of higher labour standards through government procurement is a 'soft' law mechanism that may appeal to governments at a time when economic globalization has, among other things, reduced the political willingness and ability of governments to safeguard the welfare of workers and communities through the maintenance of conventional labour law systems. In many developed economies, governments have reduced their traditional legal protection of labour rights and standards. Many developing countries maintain strong labour laws 'on paper' but lack resources, adequate institutional frameworks and, at times, the will to properly enforce labour standards. This chapter assumes, however, that governments have a crucial role to play in promoting and enforcing labour standards. The difficulties of enforcement and the high disincentives to compliance with labour laws for businesses mean that governments must find innovative ways to create inducements for more widespread compliance with labour standards. It is the contention of this chapter that promotion of existing labour standards or higher than existing legal standards through government procurement may be effective because it is responsive to existing power and resource distribution among economic and social actors (Ayres and Braithwaite, 1992; Teubner, 1983).

Three international leaders in public procurement law fully explain how the procurement award process must be managed to achieve its goals in global market economy.

The first part of the book offers a unique reflection on enduring themes in public procurement law such as the shaping of the scope of this regulatory regime, the development of tighter criteria for the exclusion of candidates and tenderers, the conduct of qualitative selection, the consolidation of the court’s previous approach to technical specifications, new developments in tender evaluation, the inclusion of contract performance clauses with a social orientation, and, last but not least, the development of interpretive guidance concerning several aspects of the procurement remedies regime. The book shows that the period 2015–2017 has been an interesting and rather intense period for the development of EU public procurement law, where the CJEU has not only consolidated some parts of its long-standing procurement case law but also introduced significant innovations that can create future challenges for the consistency of this regulatory regime. The first part of the book concludes with some thoughts on some of the salient aspects of this recent episode of silent reform of EU public procurement law through CJEU case law. The second part of the book contains the essential excerpts of forty-one chronologically ordered judgments issued by the CJEU in the period 2015–2017, which have been selected because they either raise new issues or important matters of public procurement law. Each of the selected judgments is followed by an exhaustive and critical in-depth analysis, highlighting and providing insight into its legal and practical issues and consequences. An exhaustive subject-index offers the reader quick and easy access to the case law treated in this book. This unique book, a ‘must-have’ reference work for judges and courts of all EU Member States and candidate countries and academics and legal professionals who are active in the field of procurement law, will also be valuable for law libraries and law schools across the world and for law students who focus their research and studies on EU law.

The EU public procurement regime has recently undergone an overhaul and now allows Member States and their contracting authorities to pursue strategic goals via public procurement, including environmental and social objectives. The extent to which such interests may be accommodated in the procurement process is ultimately determined by the broader legal context in which the EU public procurement regime exists, which raises pressing questions regarding the scope and limits of Member States' discretion. This volume scrutinises these new legal acts – particularly Directive 2014/24/EU – focusing on discretion and engaging with questions central to the public procurement regime against the EU legal backdrop, including internal market law and environment law, as well as law beyond the EU.

The book examines how the interests of the member states, which provide the primary driving force for developments in European integration, are internalised and addressed by the law of the European Union. In this context, member state interests are taken to mean the policy considerations, economic calculations, local socio-cultural factors, and the raw expressions of political will which shape EU policies and determine member state responses to the obligations arising from those policies. The book primarily explores the junctions and disjunctions between member state interests defined in such a manner and EU law, where the latter expresses either an obligation for the member states to comply with common policies or an acceptance of member state particularism under the common EU framework.

This timely work reflects on the role and obligations of the state as a buyer of goods and services, from the dual disciplinary perspectives of public procurement and human rights. Through theoretical and doctrinal analyses, and practice-focused case studies, it interrogates the evolving character of public procurement as an interface for multiple normative regimes and competing policies. Challenging the prevailing paradigm which subordinates human rights to narrowly-defined economic goals, insightful contributions advance a compelling case for greater inter-disciplinarity and policy coherence as crucial to realising international policies such as those embodied in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.