1. Welcomes the fact that the Commission produced the above mentioned Green Paper on public-private partnerships and Community law on public contracts and concessions, a report on the public consultation on the Green Paper and, finally, a communication on possible follow-up measures in the field of PPPs (COM(2005)0569);
2. Considers it premature to assess the effects of the public procurement directives and therefore is against a review of these directives; opposes the creation of a separate legal regime for PPPs but considers that there is a need for legislative initiatives in the areas of concessions, respecting the principles of the internal market and threshold values and providing simple rules for tendering procedures, and for clarification with regard to institutionalised public-private partnerships (IPPPs);
3. Calls on the Commission, in regulating future PPPs and in the current impact assessment of the legal provisions on concessions, to give serious consideration to regional self-government interests and to involve representatives of regional as well as local interests in drawing up future rules;
4. Favours transitional periods for existing contracts that have been concluded in good faith in accordance with national law, in order to avoid legal uncertainty;
5. Rejects every means of circumventing the law on public procurement and concessions;
6. Considers that as a matter of principle the law on public procurement should be applied whenever a private partner is to be selected;
7. Considers that the outsourcing of the provision of services of general interest requires the contracting authority to award the contract on the basis of public procurement procedures;
8. Is of the opinion that when tasks have been satisfactorily carried out with the assistance of private partners, restoring them to the municipal sphere of responsibility cannot constitute a sound alternative to PPPs which is consistent with competition principles;
9. Considers that municipalities and their subsidiaries should be permitted to be exempted from the competition principles only when they are carrying out their purely local tasks which bear no relation to the internal market;
10. Draws attention to the importance of transparency, respect for which must be evident whenever public funds are involved, and which should entail the right of elected representatives to inspect agreements and documents;
11. Recommends that the Member States create transparent mechanisms guaranteeing that private investors' legal and financial interests are protected during the whole lifetime of a contract;
12. Takes the view that transparent rules on the award of public contracts serve to enhance effective competition and protection from corruption in the interests of citizens;
13. Emphasises that the expression 'conflict of interests' should be defined at EU level in the interests of establishing a fair and equitable sharing of risk;
14. Recommends that in the implementation of PPPs, there should be provision for binding requirements to account to citizens, so as to ensure safety, efficiency and quality standards;
15. Recommends that the Member States alleviate the task of the public sector by improving the training of decision-makers with the task of selecting private partners for PPPs;
16. Expects the Member States to make arrangements to ensure that the consequences for local authority employees are handled sensitively and in good time, and that fair agreements about the transfer of (public or private sector) employees and their employment conditions are promoted and respected, in line with Council Directive 2001/23/EC of 12 March 2001 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the safeguarding of employees' rights in the event of transfers of undertakings, businesses or parts of undertakings or businesses;
17. Expects the provisions of Directive 2001/23/EC to be complied with by the public authorities in the Member States;
18. Opposes the establishment of a European agency for PPPs, but welcomes other ways of sharing experience concerning best and worst practices, such as the networking of national and regional authorities responsible for the management of PPPs;
19. Encourages the Commission and the European Investment Bank to gather together their expertise and disseminate it, especially in those Member States where the public authorities are not familiar with PPPs;
20. Emphasises that accumulated experience of PPPs helps to prevent the repetition of mistakes and of failed methods;
21. Opposes the creation of rules on the award of public procurement contracts beneath the threshold values at EU level, underlines the responsibility of the Member States to implement in an efficient way the Treaty principles of transparency, non-discrimination and the freedom to provide services in relation to public procurement contracts beneath the threshold values and confirms its position that the creation of public procurement rules at EU level is a prerogative of the Council and Parliament;
22. Calls on the Commission to ensure, by exercising Community-level control over state aid, that the granting of subsidies does not involve any discrimination between operators, whether private, public or a mixture of the two;