The amendments to the Serbian Law on Public Procurement (Official gazette of the Republic of Serbia, No. 68/2015) entered into force on August 12, 2015. The basic underlying principles of the public procurement regime do remain the same – contracting authorities shall carry out procurements in an efficient and cost effective way, with strong emphasis on the transparency and non-discrimination. Nevertheless, the changes are significant and do include:
- new definitions of the public procurement contract, the contracting authority, the framework agreement, the low-value public procurement, etc.;
- new set of rules for the mixed procurement, i.e. procurement that involves tendering of contracts that involve elements of a different nature or contracts covered by different sets of rules;
- updated set of exclusions to which the public procurement regime shall not apply and updated set of exemptions;
- clarified rules dealing with the protection of the integrity of public procurement procedure, conflict of interest, protection of competition and prevention of corruption;
- thoroughly redefined rules regulating the low-value public procurement procedure;
- changes to the rules for the conclusion of framework agreements, negotiated procedure and electronic auctions;
- changes to the centralized public procurement system;
- relaxation of the rules on planning of public procurements;
- introduction of new remedies;
- new set of rules aimed to prevent circumventions to the public procurement regime;
- new set of rules aimed to improve transparency of the public procurement regime;
- changes to the contract award criteria, e.g. introduction of life-cycle costing;
- new set of rules dealing with modification of contracts during their term.
Special rules for public procurement procedures in the fields of defence and security and in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors were introduced, as well as special rules for public procurements in urgent and unforeseeable situations such as natural disasters and technological accidents.
For more details or any questions, please contact Živković Samardžić regulatory associate Miloš Stojković at milos.stojkovic@zslaw.rs.