On 30 April 2004 the Commission adopted the Green Paper on Public-Private Partnerships and Community Law on Public Contracts and Concessions1 (the PPP Green Paper). The aim of the PPP Green Paper was to launch a debate to find out whether the Community needs to intervene to give economic operators in the Member States better access to the various forms of public private partnership under conditions of legal certainty and effective competition. It therefore describes how the rules and principles deriving from Community law on public contracts and concessions apply when a private partner is being selected, and for the duration of the contract, for different types of PPP. The Green Paper also asks a set of questions about how these rules and principles work in practice, so that the Commission can determine whether they are sufficiently clear and suited to the requirements and features of PPPs. The Commission invited all interested parties to send their comments on the 22 questions either by mail or by electronic mail by 30 July 2004.
In line with the Commission's general principles and standards for consulting interested parties,2 this report analyses the contributions received from Member States, public authorities, European and national associations, public and private enterprises and individuals.
The objective of the report is to reflect the ideas, opinions and suggestions made. It tries to identify, as objectively as possible, the main trends, views and concerns set out in the contributions. In addition, for the sake of transparency, all contributions sent electronically and with no objection to their publication have been published in full on the website of the Directorate-General for the Internal Market and Services (DG MARKT).3
The report is structured as follows: this introduction (1) is followed by some general observations on the consultation (2), an executive summary (3), and the detailed analysis of the comments received (4). The structure of the detailed analysis follows the order of the questions set out in the PPP Green Paper. Due to the particularly technical nature of the comments on question 1 ("What types of purely contractual PPP set-ups do you know of? Are these set-ups subject to specific supervision [legislative or other] in your country?") and question 21 ("Do you know of other forms of PPPs which have been developed in countries outside the Union? Do you have examples of 'good practice' in this framework which could serve as a model for the Union? If so, please elaborate.") they have not been included in this report, but will be analysed at a later stage on the DG MARKT website.
It did not appear desirable to indicate the exact number of "votes" of stakeholders in favour or against one or the other position. On the one hand contributions were not always easily and on all issues attributable to one or the other position. On the other hand the indication of exact numbers could even be misleading, as some enterprises from the same sector and sharing the same interest submitted each a nearly identical position, rather than sending just one coordinated contribution via their association as most other enterprises did. Questions on how to count such contributions do not need to be accentuated if only general trends are indicated.
The report does not aim to draw political conclusions from the consultation process as such. The Commission intends to present its conclusions in the second half of 2005.
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2 Towards a reinforced culture of consultation and dialogue – General principles and minimum standards for consultation of interested parties by the Commission, Communication from the Commission, COM(2002) 704, 11.12.2002.
3 http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/publicprocurement/ppp_en.htm.