Moving In and Out of the Shadow of European Case Law: the Dynamics of Public Procurement in the Post‐Post‐Rüffert Era

Abstract

Judicial Europeanization, particularly European case law and the Rüffert ruling, has created significant legal uncertainty in the use of labour clauses in public procurement, which may constrain national policymakers. However, national actors find ways to ‘push back’ against Europeanization in order to prioritize domestic policy goals. By analysing the long‐term political dynamic surrounding public procurement in Denmark, Germany and the UK since the implementation of the revised 2014 public procurement directive, we show how both national actors, and actors at subnational level, where much public procurement actually takes place, contest the Europeanization of public policies. Variation in the willingness and ability of actors to leverage the legal uncertainty to adopt labour clauses results in diverging policy trajectories, but also creates a room for policy innovation. This alters the ultimate outcome of the European regulatory agenda and results in a continued divergence of public policies across member states.

Explaining varieties of social solidarity in supply chains: Actors, institutions and market risks distribution in outsourced public services

“…In Italy, the Code for Public Contracts -the main regulatory framework for public procurement -establishes the inclusion of specific labour clauses requiring the successful tenderer to safeguard employment levels and to apply the most representative private national collective agreement (NCA) of reference in the sector. Similarly, in Denmark, in the application of the ILO-94 Convention, the labour clause included in the call for tenders requests subcontractors to rehire the personnel employed in the outsourced service and to adhere to wage levels and working conditions set in the most representative NCAs within the relevant sector (Refslund 2020(Refslund et al, 2020. Furthermore, trade unions have a strongly institutionalized role in the public sector, as evidenced by the consultation rights that they enjoy in the case of outsourcing involving personnel, the widespread presence of their elected representatives within workplaces, and their high organizational density, above the EU average -in 2016, respectively, around 50 per cent in Italy and 81.5 per cent in Denmark (OECD, 2021).…”

Sozialpolitisierung: Der Einzug von sozialen Kriterien ins Vergaberecht

“…Dies veranschaulicht auch unsere eigene nachfolgende Analyse zur Sozialpolitisierung der Vergabepolitik auf europäischer und nationaler Ebene. Sie trägt zudem dazu bei, Verbindungslinien zwischen beiden Ansätzen aufzuzeigen, indem sie illustriert, dass der "lange Schatten" des europäischen Fallrechts (Schmidt 2015) einerseits die nachfolgende Gesetzgebung auf europäischer und nationaler Ebene substantiell beschränkt hat, zugleich aber auch die Herausbildung genuiner Gesetzesinnovationen unterstützt hat, die sich aus diesem Schatten heraus bewegen, und die ihrerseits wieder Rückwirkungen auf Rechtsprechung und Gesetzgebung haben (s. auch Refslund et al 2020). Um die Dialektik dieser Entwicklung vollständig zu erfassen und ihre Hintergründe zu verstehen, ist die von Susanne Schmidt entwickelte Langzeitperspektive mit ihrer Unterscheidung indirekter und direkter Effekte des europäischen Fallrechts hilfreich.…”

To comply or to be committed? Public procurement and labour rights in global supply chains

“…Maybe the most evident obstacles are financial aspects and the availability of products (Walker and Brammer, 2009) and the lack of expertise (Brammer and Walker, 2011). From the literature, the following bundle of additional barriers can be summarised: First, a mismatch of politics, that is, political majorities and policy preferences between the regulating state level and the administering level of (sub-)national authorities is a likely obstacle for implementation (Refslund et al, 2020; Sack, 2012). It cannot be taken for granted that the political will for protecting labour rights in GSCs is present throughout the different levels of the politico-administrative system.…”