Our proposal for amendments on the draft public procurement directive aims at improving provisions on processes for the award of contracts for social services and on social considerations.

In particular, we demand to:

1. Explicitly recognise the alternatives to public procurement in the provision of social services: in social service delivery, it is important to promote and develop the alternatives to public procurement, starting from the experience of many member states, insofar these alternatives correspond to the historical and operational specificities of most of social services and allow them to fulfil at best their mission of general interest and to ensure the participation of service users
2. Abolish the lowest cost as award criteria for social services; make quality a mandatory element: the inclusion of quality criteria in public procurement procedures for social services has to be a mandatory criterion, as for social services, quality is essential to the outcome of the service and the well-being of the users
3. Extend the possibility for contracting authorities to reserve markets for the provision of social services to non for profit organisations in compliance with the EUCJ case law
4. Allow social considerations related to the production process of the product / work / service procured being included throughout the whole public procurement process
5. Improving provisions on abnormally low bids to ensure that working conditions of workers involved in the production of goods, services or works procured are respected.