GWU Law is a proud supporter of two international conferences on emerging issues in transatlantic public contract administration, at King’s College, London on March 16 and at the University of Warsaw on March 18. Both conferences are free.
On February 13, 2020, at 12:00 noon ET, the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of International Law (SIL) Anti-Corruption Committee will join with the ABA Public Contract Law Section (PCLS) Suspension and Debarment Committee, for an informal lunchtime session on developments in international debarment. The session will be moderated by Assistant Dean Jessica Tillipman, George Washington University Law School, Washington DC.
Christopher Yukins, George Washington University Law School (who co-teaches courses on anti-corruption with Dean Tillipman), will discuss emerging international models for debarment, and the impact that new electronic marketplaces may have on debarment globally. With regard to the U.S. experience, he has drafted a book chapter with John Pachter and Jessica Tillipman, for a forthcoming book on compliance by Cambridge University Press. Professor Yukins has also co-written a piece with Professor Michal Kania (U. Silesia – Katowice), comparing debarment in the United States and the European Union.
Pascal Friton, a partner in the BLOMSTEIN firm, Berlin, will discuss how the European Union’s member states are addressing exclusion and debarment, drawing on a piece he presented at the Thomson Reuters Government Contracts Year in Review in February 2019. He also will be speaking on the afternoon of Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at this year’s Year in Review conference.
Collin Swan, of the World Bank’s Office of Suspension & Debarment, will discuss his office’s debarment survey and the office’s ongoing research into other debarment systems (beyond the United States and the World Bank). See his FCPA Blog post on the survey.
Additional resources
Grace Sullivan, a third-year student at the George Washington University Law School, recently won first prize in the Public Contract Law Journal annual writing contest for her note (which was also accepted for publication in the Journal). Her note analyzes three case studies of foreign contractors debarred by the U.S. government: Chinese telecommunications giants ZTE and Huawei, and Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky. Ms. Sullivan will be presenting on her note at the March 2020 ABA PCLS Federal Procurement Institute in Annapolis, MD.
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Professor Gabriella Racca hosted a colloquium on transnational procurement at the University of Turin on February 5, 2020. The discussion focused on a new book, Joint Public Procurement and Innovation: Lessons Across Borders (G. Racca & C. Yukins, eds., 2019). Further information is included in the accompanying flyer.
Professor Chris Jansen (VU Amsterdam) and Professor Patricia Valcárcel Fernández (University of Vigo), members of the academic consortium Public Contracts in Legal Globalisation, are undertaking a detailed (and quite interesting) study of contract administration law in the European Union, to assess the relationship between competition and contract administration. They presented on this project at the consortium’s meeting at the University of Paris – Nanterre (La Defense campus) on December 13, 2019. They describe their project as follows:
This project seeks to investigate, problematize, and clarify the possible interaction between the competition interest, as well as its regulation, inherent in competitive tendering on the one hand, and the execution of public contracts and concession contracts on the other. The project is based on the assumption that the particular factual and legal context of competitive tendering must be taken into account by the courts when they apply rules of substantive law in order to resolve issues related to the execution of contracts. If this assumption turns out to be correct, it would further mean that the resolving of issues by the courts could, in its turn, have an impact on the competition interest. If that is indeed proven to be the case, the results of the project could be relevant for the further debate on public procurement regulation.
Based on the aforesaid assumptions, this project seeks to answer the following three research questions. (1) In the event that a national court of law must resolve issues regarding the execution of a public contract or a concession contract by applying rules of substantive law (general administrative law; general private law; common law, depending on the legal system concerned), will the court take into account the particular factual and legal context of the competitive tendering procedure? If so: how will the court do this? If not: why not? to indicate those rules that relate to the award of public contracts and concession contracts by means of competitive tendering procedures. Another factual difference relates to the bargaining power of the parties involved in the two situations. In the second situation, it is possible – although not necessarily so – that the two private parties will have had equal bargaining power when they negotiated the content of their contract. In the first situation, however, it is inherent in the competitive tendering procedure that the contracting authority will have had the power to dominate the content of the subsequent contract.(2) To what extent is it possible to problematize and/or unify the various approaches that are found in the answers to question (1)? (3) Based on the aforesaid analysis, to what extent is it possible and necessary to give recommendations to national courts, legislators and perhaps even the supranational legislators (e.g. the European Union) as regards the subject matter?
As the project description suggests, this study relates directly to what may the next wave of reform in procurement in the European Union — a critical reassessment of public contract administration law (and forums), which is also a focus of the upcoming March 16, 2020 symposium at King’s College, London.
The full project description is included below.
On December 12, 2019 the University Paris Est Créteil hosts a conference on principles of public contracts in Europe, coordinated by Professor Stéphane de La Rosa, University Professor and Director of the Research Team MIL (Markets, Institutions and Liberties).
Martin Raz – Havel & Partners – Czech Republic
Steven Van Garsse, Professeur à l’Université de Anvers (BE), Professor of Public Law – University of Anvers/Hasselt, on Principles of efficiency and effectiveness
Romélien Colavitti, Senior Lecturer in Public Law – University of Valenciennes, on The principles governing alternate modes of dispute resolution
Carole Cravero, PhD student University of Turin and University of Paris-West Nanterre, on The Principles of Corporate Social Responsibility and Public Contracts
Vincent Bouhier, Senior Lecturer and Dean – Evry-Paris Saclay University, The Principle of Reciprocity
Lt Col Daniel Schoeni, Judge Advocate, U.S. Air Force; PhD Candidate, University of Nottingham, Is the practice of negotiation in public contracts a common principle?
Christopher Yukins, Lynn David Research Professor of Government Procurement Law, George Washington University Law School; moderator
On October 28, 2019, a training session was held in Tbilisi, Georgia on anti-corruption efforts. The session was convened by the European Union’s “twinning” project, “Strengthening Public Procurement Practices in Georgia,” and moderated by Ms. Dana Mitae, Legal Advisor and Consultant for the Department for Consulting, e-Procurement and International Affairs, Federal Procurement Agency of Austria, Austria. The session built on Georgia’s Association Agreement with the European Union, which calls in Chapter 8 for Georgia to incorporate important elements of the European Union’s procurement directives into Georgia’s own laws and institutions. The session was opened by Mr. Levan Razmadze – Chairman of State Procurement Agency of Georgia, and outside experts included Prof. Christopher Yukins, George Washington University (USA), Mr. Mihai Dragutescu, President of the Senate for Administrative Cases (Romania), and Ms. Maja Kuhar, President of the State Commission for Supervision of Public Procurement Procedures, Zagreb (Croatia).
On October 23-24, 2019, Professor Andrea Sundstrand (U. Stockholm) hosted the annual public procurement conference in Stockholm. Michael Bowsher QC (King’s College, London/Monckton Chambers), Marta Andhov (U. Copenhagen) and Chris Yukins (presentation below) were keynote speakers.
In an editorial published in Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Professor Gustavo Piga of the University of Rome – Tor Vergata, an activist in Italian politics and and a leader in the international procurement community, responded to an article by Christopher Yukins assessing the Trump administration’s latest Buy American initiative. Professor Piga argued that, though the actual impact of the Trump order might be minimal (as Professor Yukins pointed out), Italian policymakers should emulate U.S. support for small businesses, which the U.S. undertakes through protectionist preferences. Professor Piga closed: “GliStatiUniti lo insegnano chiaramente: non pensando per le piccole, smettiamo di pensare in grande.” (“The United States clearly teaches this: by not thinking of the small, we stop thinking big.”).
This is the fourth European conference on e-public procurement organized by the Portuguese Observatory of Technology Foresight (OPET), focusing on the European public procurement directives and their implementation in the European member states through e-procurement. The conference scientific committee is headed by Professor Luis Valaderes Tavares, and the conference program is here.
On March 5, 2019 Christopher Yukins joined a videoconference for King’s College, London’s online diploma course on EU and global procurement law. His slides are below. On April 24, 2020, he joined them for a supplemental class by Zoom videoconference (linked below).
