Member of the European Court of Auditors, Ivana Maletić, and her associate, Tea Vlainić, presented thematic report 28/2023 from the European Court of Auditors titled “Public Procurement in the EU – Less Market Competition for Contracts Awarded for Works, Goods, and Services in the Ten-Year Period up to 2021” at a meeting held at the Central Finance and Contracting Agency for EU Programmes and Projects (CFCA).
According to the data in the report, Croatia is one of three member states where the rate of procedures with only one bidder decreased during the observed period (the other two countries being Malta and Slovakia). The rate of procedures with only one bidder almost halved from 48.6% in 2013 to 24.6% in 2021, according to the trend analysis of the European Court of Auditors. The share of procedures without a call for tenders decreased by about two-thirds from 39% in 2013 to approximately 14% in 2021. With this significant reduction, Croatia now ranks 11th among the top-performing EU-27 countries in 2021.
Public procurements where price is not the sole deciding criterion (strategic public procurement) accounted for 96.4% in 2021, placing Croatia at the top of the EU-27 list.
Director of the CFCA Dragan Jelić, and his colleagues discussed CFCA’s experiences related to the implementation of projects from the Operational Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion 2014-2020, projects from the EU Solidarity Fund and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), as well as calls and the role the CFCA plays in the perspective of 2021-2027. They specifically addressed the verification of public procurement procedures financed by EU funds and efforts made to increase the efficiency of these verifications.
