Guidance on the participation of third country bidders in the EU procurement market
The EU has an open procurement market, the largest in the world with a value estimated at €2 trillion yearly. In increasingly global markets, public buyers in the EU need to be equipped with the right tools and knowledge to deal with bidders from countries outside of the EU.
The guidance published on July 24 by the European Commission provides practical advice to public buyers in the Member States. It helps them identify which third country bidders have secured access to the EU procurement market. The guidance further aims to raise awareness among contracting authorities of the different instruments in the EU public procurement toolbox. This includes measures that may be taken in case of abnormally low-priced offers, as well as measures to ensure that third country bidders respect the same quality as EU bidders in areas such as security, labour and environmental standards.
MFP removes from the Prevention Law violation of the term of use of new cash registers
The Ministry of Public Finance proposes, through a draft normative act, the abolition of the contravention regarding the failure of the users of the electronic fiscal stamps to comply with the legal deadlines, to use electronic cash registers (art.10 lit.cc) of the Ordinance Government Emergency no.28 / 1999) under the provisions of the Prevention Law no.270 / 2017.
The measure is necessary as the economic operators violating the obligation to endow with the new devices have no objective reasons for non-compliance, given that distribution licenses have been issued for the marking machines covering all types of economic activities and authorized distributors have stockpiles of new markers. In addition, a large number of economic operators have purchased and installed electronic logging equipment, and the perpetuation of this situation would lead to discrimination of the right economic operators.
NBR Board decisions on monetary policy
In its meeting of 4 July 2019, the Board of the National Bank of Romania decided: to keep the monetary policy rate at 2.50 percent per annum; to leave unchanged the deposit facility rate at 1.50 percent per annum and the lending facility rate at 3.50 percent per annum; and to maintain the existing levels of minimum reserve requirement ratios on both leu- and foreign currency-denominated liabilities of credit institutions.
Economic growth data for 2019 Q1 indicate a faster annual growth rate of real GDP to reach 5 percent from 4.1 percent in the previous quarter. On the demand side, final consumption continued to be the main driver of economic expansion, the swifter pace of increase owing, inter alia, to a base effect, ahead of the change in inventories and of gross fixed capital formation, whose dynamics re-entered positive territory.
By contrast, net exports had a larger negative contribution to GDP dynamics against the background of a wider negative differential between the growth rates of exports and imports of goods and services. Data for April 2019 show a faster rise, in annual terms, in both trade deficit and current account deficit compared to those seen in 2019 Q1.
The Budgetary Instrument for Convergence and Competitiveness
The European Commission proposed at the end of July a governance framework for the Budgetary Instrument for Convergence and Competitiveness. The instrument will help euro area Member States and other participating Member States to enhance the resilience of their economies and of the euro area through support to targeted reforms and investment.
The new framework will enable euro area Member States to:
- set strategic orientations for reforms and investment priorities in the euro area (as part of the euro area recommendation);
- provide country-specific guidance in relation to reform and investment objectives, to be adopted in parallel with the country-specific recommendations;
- receive information from the Commission on how euro area Member States have followed up on previous strategic orientations;
The Budgetary Instrument for Convergence and Competitiveness will be created within the proposal for the Reform Support Programme. The budgetary instrument is planned to be part of the Union’s budget and its size will be determined in the context of the negotiations on EU’s next long-term budget for 2021-2027.