EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

Prague, Czechia

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

appropriate legal regulations in order to stop the spread of the pandemic and combat the negative effects caused by it. Apart from statutory changes in the functioning of public administration, private enterprises, universities, schools, and communication, the health services responsible for public health have become an important sphere. From this perspective, the law, in particular the public procurement system, has become an extremely important tool for preventing and combating the effects of the pandemic. The purpose of these regulations, whether in the EU or individual Member States, was to define how the public sector should pursue the delivery, service, or perform public works necessary to combat the effects of a pandemic, such as the construction of temporary hospitals. Public procurement is the foundation for the systemof administering public funds while maintaining openness of the procedure, fair competition, equal treatment of bidders, and control of the implementation of the public procurement process (Zborowski, 2019, pp. 151–163). However, a fairly formalized system of public procurement may become an obstacle in satisfying the needs which arise in the circumstances of a pandemic when speed becomes the value. The subject of the study is the analysis of the rules of abrogating or limiting the application of the public procurement law in extraordinary situations. Undoubtedly, the epidemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus may be considered as such conditions. The aim of the study is to analyze the initial Polish, Italian, and Spanish legal solutions developed at the start of the pandemic until the end of March 2020. Such a methodological procedure, and in particular, a specific period of time, will allow the ex-ante assessment of the legal regulations of the three legal orders in terms of the legislature’s interference with the existing provisions of public procurement law in relation to the guidelines of the European Commission, issued in the form of a communication on April 2020 (2020 / C 108 I / 01). In this research perspective, the following questions arise: what is the relationship between the solutions adopted in the communication and the provisions of Directive 2004/18 / EC (Sadowy, 2011)? What solutions did the Commission propose in its communication? Has the position of the Commission in the Communication had an impact on the basis of the freedom principle of the Union, which are: the freedom of movement of capital, services, and people? Finally, has it had any impact on the principles of free competition on the EU market? After all, it is extremely important to look for an answer to the question of whether it was necessary to regulate Member States’ public procurement systems in view of the pandemic (Farca, Dacian, 2020, pp. 60–79)? The implementation of the adopted goals requires not only the use of the classic legal and dogmatic method, thanks to which the analysis of legal provisions will be carried out, or the descriptive method, but also the method of comparative legal analysis. The latter method will allow for the examination and assessment of the adequacy of legal measures adopted by the

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