This presentation discusses the EU's reaction to the opportunities and challenges of the fourth industrial revolution in the area of public procurement law and policy, with a special focus on innovation procurement and procurement digitalisation.

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EU Public Procurement Policy and
the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Pushing and Pulling as One?
Prof Albert Sanchez-Graells
YEL Annual Conference 2020
Paris, 10 January 2020

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Agenda
To critically assess the tensions in the
EU’s role as an ‘Industrial and Regulatory
State’ in the eve of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution in the area of public
procurement law and policy
Focus on procurement of innovation and
procurement digitalisation

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Procurement: what’s new?
2011-2014 revision of rules
2014 EU Public Procurement Package
2017 Strategy ‘Making procurement work in
and for Europe’
Unclear if any changes under new
Commission (seemingly, not)

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Placing the discussion
Main regulatory ‘response’ curiously pre-dates mainstreaming of
digital technologies
Broadly suitable framework due to flexibility and (green)
innovation-friendliness, as well as transition to eProcurement
Current focus on industrial approach and marginal regulatory
adaptations

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Procurement of innovation
Using procurement expenditure as
economic lever

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Innovation procurement as
an (EU) protectionist pull
Using buying power as an innovation pull
– as a rare exception from the internal
market’s general repulsion for (domestic)
industrial policy by Member States
Seeking to protect EU (innovation)
industry from external non-reciprocal
competition—via the (marred?) IPI

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Meanwhile, in the MS
Really large differences
in uptake of innovation
procurement in the
digital economy
Under-researched intra-
EU implications of
industrial policy
PWC (2019) 4, Table 1.

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Procurement digitalization
(or procedural innovation)
Seeking to develop GovTech / RegTech
procurement solutions

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Pushing for procurement
digitalisation
Digitalisation beyond eProcurement (?)
• Limited mandatory requirements
• Limited precision of potentiality
Procurement & PSI / Open Data Directive
• No data, no fun / eForms for end 2022
• No common understanding of the ‘what’
and ‘why’ of data collection / publication
• B2G data sharing (still) challenging

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Meanwhile, in the MS
Significant delays in the implementation of eProcurement + policy
exhaustion
Significant divergences in the protection of commercially-sensitive
information, including under FOI rules
There is space for a more robust regulatory intervention (unlikely?)

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Some thoughts

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Push-pull tensions
Most tensions are vertical, both in industrial
and in regulatory interventions
Aggressive industrial approach re innovation
not necessarily supported at MS level
More timid regulatory approach re
digitalization also generates difficulties and
limits eg pan-EU AI-related experimentation

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Same old, same old?
Nothing too distinctive about this except,
perhaps, increased ‘mercantilism’ at EU level
(especially re Industrial State interventions)
Unclear whether AI Agenda (or Green Deal?)
can be significant catalysts – what role for
uncertainty in (EU) Regulatory State?

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Full paper (feedback welcome)
Sanchez-Graells, Albert, ‘EU Public Procurement Policy and the
Fourth Industrial Revolution: Pushing and Pulling as One?’
(August 6, 2019). To be presented at the YEL Annual EU Law &
Policy Conference 2020: ‘EU Law in the era of the Fourth
Industrial Revolution’. Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3440554 or
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3440554

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Thank you for your
attention & stay in touch
a.sanchez-graells@bristol.ac.uk
@asanchezgraells