Explanatory Memorandum to COM(2001)449 - Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) - Main contents
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This page contains a limited version of this dossier in the EU Monitor.
| dossier | COM(2001)449 - Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV). |
|---|---|
| source | COM(2001)449  |
| date | 03-08-2001 |
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52001PC0449
Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) /* COM/2001/0449 final - COD 2001/0179 */
Official Journal 025 E , 29/01/2002 P. 0001 - 0467
Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV)
(presented by the Commission)
EXPLANATORY NOTE
The Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) is a further development and improvement of the CPA (Statistical Classification of Products by Activity in the EEC) and NACE Rev. 1 (General Industrial Classification of Economic Activities within the European Communities), aimed at gearing them more closely to the particular features of the public procurement sector.
The CPV consists of a main vocabulary for defining the subject of a contract, and a supplementary vocabulary for adding further qualitative information. The main vocabulary is based on a five-level hierarchical structure, while the supplementary vocabulary has two levels. A wording describing the supplies, works or services in all the official languages is associated with each code.
In 1996, the Commission adopted a recommendation on the use of the CPV for describing the subject of contracts i. In this recommendation, contracting authorities or entities were invited to use the CPV to describe the contracts in their contract notices.
In the same year, the Commission published its Green Paper entitled 'Public procurement in the European Union: exploring the way forward' i, in which it invited all interested parties to state their views on the appropriateness of making the use of the CPV more widespread. The answers it received showed that the business world, the Member States and the institutions were clearly in favour of using the CPV with a view to simplifying the process of publishing contract notices. The Commission analysed these contributions and presented the action it envisaged in its Communication entitled "Public procurement in the European Union i. It particularly intended to encourage contracting authorities to use the CPV and the standard forms when drawing up their notices and to use the possibilities afforded by the new information and communication technologies for transmitting them.
Since 1996, the CPV has been systematically used, by virtue of the directives, in all contract notices published in the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Communities for identifying the subject of contracts, and for automatic translation into the other official languages of the Community.
The CPV has thus become the central search criterion used by potential tenderers for selecting and identifying possible contracts.
Under the public procurement directives, the classifications are used for three different purposes: for describing the subjects of contracts in notices, for meeting statistical obligations and for defining fields of application. Hitherto, the Directives have referred to four different classifications: CPA, NACE, CPC Prov. (Provisional Central Product Classification) and CN (Combined Nomenclature). The proposed revisions currently being discussed by the Council and the European Parliament - on the coordination of procedures for the award of public supply contracts, public service contracts and public works contracts i and the other coordinating the procurement procedures of entities operating in the water, energy and transport sectors i - replace these four classifications by the single CPV.
Up to now, however, the CPV has had no proper legal basis in the form of a regulation clearly defining the rules to be observed when drafting or updating it. This Regulation aims to fill this gap by adopting the CPV formally as the Community system for classifying public contracts and establishing the procedures for maintaining and revising it.
In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, a legal basis for the CPV, as the single classification system to be applied to all Community public contracts, may be established only at Community level. As for the principle of proportionality, the Regulation provides for the establishment of a standard system of classification to be applied directly in all the Member States.
In the past, the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities has often had to insert the CPV code corresponding to the description of the subject of the contract into a notice sent by a contracting authority or entity. This has occasionally led to errors in the notices, because of the sometimes highly technical nature of the information. In order to improve the quality of the publications, therefore, we must ensure that the contracting authorities and entities themselves see to it that the descriptions of the subjects of their contracts correspond with the CPV. Since these authorities and entities are the best placed for defining the subject of their contracts, the quality of the notices should improve as a result, and this in turn will help to increase the effectiveness of the publication.
The use of a single multilingual classification system will enable economic operators to identify the contracts they are interested in with greater accuracy, thus giving them easier access to public contracts.
This CPV will enable the summaries of the contract notices to be translated automatically, thus reducing the scope for errors, and hence significantly reducing the processing costs and permitting substantial savings of taxpayers' money. Automatic translation will also help speed up the publication process.
In order to enable users to take full advantage of the possibilities afforded by the CPV and to familiarise themselves with the new system, tables showing the correspondence between the CPV and the classifications mentioned above are included in annex to this Regulation.
The vital role of the CPV in the development of electronic public procurement should also be stressed. The CPV will be a decisive element in the process of meeting the commitments entered into as part of the e-Europe and e-Commission initiatives, since it will permit electronic processing of the published data, which will improve the quality of the information and the speed with which it is disseminated, and hence the efficiency of the publication system established by the directives.
The CPV will also make it easier to keep statistics on public procurement as laid down in the directives by simplifying the tasks of the contracting authorities and entities and, at international level, it will permit greater comparability with data based on the other classifications used by the signatories to the Agreement on Government Procurement.
By its very nature, the CPV will have to be adaptable. If its quality is to be maintained, it will have to be able to keep abreast of market developments and hence to respond to the needs of its users (contracting authorities and potential suppliers) in the most appropriate fashion. A revision procedure has therefore been established as part of the implementation powers assigned to the Commission, assisted by the Advisory Committee on Public Contracts, in accordance with Article 78(1)(f) and (g) of the proposal for a Directive on the coordination of procedures for awarding public contracts for supplies, services and works, and Article 67(1)(c) and (d) of the proposal for a Directive on the coordination of procedures for awarding public contracts in the water, energy and transport sectors. i
Finally, the scope of the directives on public procurement will be unchanged. Indeed, use of the CPV will help to clarify it, hence promoting improved application of Community law on public procurement in the Union.
The updating process will be based largely on the suggestions and comments made by the direct users of the CPV, as in the case of the first revision at the end of 1998. This Regulation adopts a new revision, basically consisting of the 1998 version adapted in the light of practice and experience.
This proposal is for a Regulation laying down the CPV as a key element in Community public procurement policy and the rules for revising it. The European Parliament and the Council are asked to adopt this proposal.