Public procurement in Sweden is regulated by the Act on Public Procure­ment (lagen om offentlig upphandling, LOU, in Swedish). The Public procurement in Sweden stands every year approximately for 500 bil­lion Swedish crowns of the taxpayers’ money. It is therefore im­portant that the money is spent in the best possible way. The focus in this study is set on the relationship between the small- and medium sized building entrepreneurs and the government. The study is built on international scientific arti­cles together with Swedish industry articles and the results from our own interview study. A comparison has been made between the three and it has resulted in listing obstacles for SME (small- and medium sizes enter­prises) and how to overcome these obstacles.

Rapidly changing business environment, increasing and fluctuating customer demand, the recent development and employment of technology are crucial reasons for companies to strive for better quality, shorter lead time and lower costs. The supplier evaluation and selection process is an increasingly important activity in the supply chain in order to enhance the company’s competitiveness by reducing the costs and simultaneously maintaining the same quality of products. The focus of this thesis is on the supplier evaluation and selection process for public procurement in Swedish electricity industry. Specifically, the work combines the literature and the empirical findings gathered from the case company Växjö Energy (VEAB) to develop a supplier evaluation and selection process for the public procurement in Swedish electricity industry. It was concluded that the supplier evaluation and selection process for public procurement has basically four steps. The steps are 1. Identifying the needs and the sourcing method; 2. Setting the pre-requirements; 3. Supplier evaluation and 4. Supplier selection. In addition, the developed supplier evaluation tool innovatively combines the advantages of the value-added model with the advantages of AHP model. Moreover, this developed supplier evaluation and selection process would help the public procurement departments in Swedish electricity industry to improve their current practices in selecting the suppliers by highlighting the important steps and developing the evaluation model in a way that enhance its credibility to provide a more precise and reliable results.

The thesis provides for a comprehensive legal overview of bid rigging and its manifestation in public procurement. Bid rigging is defined as coordination of competitors in tenders which is not necessary and which is executed when these competitors submit bids according to the conditions agreed among them. The thesis briefly sums up available information on occurrence of bid rigging with emphasis on the only two cases of bid rigging that have been identified, proved and sanctioned in the Czech Republic. This information suggests that despite the fact that the risk of bid rigging is higher at certain markets, notably markets with limited number of competitors present thereon, it may take place in any market. Bid rigging is further analysed as a prohibited agreement distorting competition which always distorts or prevents competitions and as such is considered one of the most serious anti- competitive practices capable of causing immense economic damage. A separate chapter tackles bid rigging in public procurement. This chapter analyses legal basis of prohibition of bid rigging in public procurement, its impact on principles of efficiency, effectiveness and expediency, and points out factors that may support occurrence of bid rigging. With regards to this analysis, the thesis formulates several...

The core of diploma thesis lies in analysis of public procurement procedure of which defining features in all the world public procurement systems are elimination of competition and constraints to the transparency, which opens up the scope especially for disguised breaches of law, discrimination of suppliers and corruption - negotiated procedure without notice. Existence of negotiated procedure without notice is not overseen in the Czech legal environment. Frequency of its use currently amounts to significant 20 per cent of all awarded contracts. This procurement procedure has been traditionally justified in all procurement systems by specific circumstances, which from its nature either eliminate competition, or there is another public interest, which outweigh free competition. Thus balancing of such interests tends to be the major problem when assessing permission to use this non-transparent procedure. Negotiated procedure without notice has already occurred in the Czech law in the first legal act, which governed public procurement. The respective groundbreaker was the Act No. 199/1994 Coll., which was inspired by the UNCITRAL Model law on public procurement. After the accession to the European Union, the Czech Republic was forced to reflect common procurement framework and to implement provisions...

This thesis deals with public procurement of mobile network operators services and analysis of institutional and procedural characteristics under which public authorities are able to reach lower prices than regular retail customers. The applied model attempts to explain a variation in final price of high consumption mobile services consumer basket. The variation is explained as a function of estimated price of consumer basket, year of tender, length of contract, supplier, governance structure of public authority, number of bidders and use of electronic auction. The results indicate that usage of electronic auction brings lower final price of mobile services by 8.6 %, T-Mobile is more expensive than O2 and Vodafone on average by 8 % and each additional bidder decreases the final price on average by 6.1 %. We found that there exists statistically significant difference in the final price with respect to type of public authority. The final price of mobile services is decreasing in time, on average by 9 % per year. Together with insignificance of the variable measuring length of contract, it follows that long term contracts are not cost-efficient.

Abnormally low tender price with regard to the case law of administrative courts and the Office for the Protection of Competition Abnormally low tender price is one of the most problematic issues in public procurement law. The aim of this thesis is a detailed analysis of the concept of abnormally low tender price with regard to the case law of administrative courts and the Office for the Protection of Competition. The analysis is made both in relation to the Public Procurement act and the EU Directive on public procurement. After an introductory part the thesis is divided into seven main chapters. The first chapter outlines basic terms necessary for comprehensive analysis of further discussed issues. Chapter two deals with the concept of abnormally low tender price including its evolution in the former public procurement law. The third chapter focuses on the process of assessment of the tenders concerning the abnormally low tender price. This chapter deals with the request for explanation of the tenderer's tender price, with requirements of this explanation and with assessment of this explanation made by evaluation committee. Chapter four examines the zero tender price and the case law of administrative courts regarding the correct procedure in case of occurrence of this price. This chapter takes...

The aim of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the issue of the concluding of public procurement contracts. The thesis provides both an analysis on the conclusion of public procurement contract by itself, so the comprehensive overview and analysis of the acts required to the conclusion of public procurement contract. The thesis is divided into chapters. The first chapter provides the general definition of the public contracts. Next chapters chronologically describe the different phases of procurement procedure as follows: the phase before start of procurement procedure, the phase of procurement procedure, the phase of conclusion of public contract in the strict sense and the phase after the conclusion of contract. Separate chapter concerns the means of defense against the conclusion of public contract in breach of the applicable law.

Currently there are 280 state enterprises registered in the commercial register of the Czech Republic. Although most of them are in liquidation and only few dozen is active, generally their importance lies in the purpose which their activities pursue in today's economic and political system. They operate in specific fields, which tend to be of strategic importance, their activities shall often meet a public interest. In sectors, in which state enterprises operate, they usually occupy very strong positions also due to the scale and type of assets, which they have. The distinctive features of a state enterprise gave rise to many legal questions about its nature. In the recent past, some disputes were resolved by practice whereas other issues are conceptual and can only be changed by changing the legislation. Although the systematic attention of professional public has currently not been dedicated to a state enterprise, increased interest has been noticeable in recent years in respect of particular questions relating to it, such as the issue of public procurement, information providing, or transfer of state enterprise profits to the state budget. The thesis focuses on the specifics of a state enterprise. It tries to describe its characteristics and apply them when solving practical issues which state...

1 Abstract Protection against improper conduct of a contracting authority in a public tender The aim of this thesis is to analyze the system of protection against improper conduct of a contracting authority in a public tender in the Czech Republic. This is a hot topic since the public eye at present focuses on corruption in public administration and public procurement is often mentioned in this context. The work consists of four chapters. The first chapter discusses the basic principles of public procurement, and highlights their importance for protection against improper conduct of a contracting authority. The second chapter of the thesis deals with the sources of legislation of protection against improper conduct and defines the term review procedures as a generic term. The third chapter provides an introduction of the authorities providing protection against improper conduct of contracting authorities and their responsibilities in overseeing public procurement. The fourth chapter contains individual means of protection, which can be used by a supplier to correct errors of the contracting authority. These means of protection are objections against the conduct of the contracting authority, the administrative procedure before the Office for Protection of Competition and an action against the decision of the...

The purpose of this thesis is to identify the most common and the most severe deficiencies in the conduct of the contracting authorities in the case law of the Office for the Protection of Competition and based on the data about numbers of these deficiencies in the past years and by taking into consideration the proposed legislative changes forecast the future development in the numbers and severity of the deficiencies in the conduct of the contracting authorities. In case of an adverse forecast correct aim of future legislative changes will be suggested so that the principles of transparency, equal treatment and non-discrimination would be protected and more efficient use of public funds would be ensured. The thesis is composed of eight chapters, each of them dealing with different aspects of the deficiencies of the contracting authorities. Chapter One is introductory. Chapter Two describes how the case law of the Office for the Protection of Competition was researched and used in this thesis. Chapter Three briefly describes the history of the Office for the Protection of Competition as the body which supervises the adherence to the Act on Public Procurement and as such provides the main source of case law and information for this thesis. Chapter Four is divided into five parts, each devoted to on...