On 20 February 2018, the Act amending the Public Procurement Act (the “PPA-3”) was adopted and has become operational on 1 November 2018. The new PPA-3 implements the Directive 2014/24 / EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2014 on public procurement and repealing Directive 2004/18/EC and the Directive 2014/25 / EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2014 on procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors and repealing Directive 2004/17/EC into national legislation. The Slovenian legislator has thus merged both directives into the single law applicable for both, the general and for the infrastructure field.
The new PPA-3 amended the existing procurement procedures most notably by omitting the obligation to publish the public procurement notice in certain cases of negotiations. Thus, as of 1 November 2018, the previous negotiation procedure subject to prior publication was replaced by a more competitive negotiation procedure enabling.
Moreover, the PPA-3 has brought a new process called the Innovation partnership, which aims to shorten the procurement procedure by setting shorter deadlines and abolishing the request for the explanation of the decision of the decision on the award of a public procurement contract is abolished. The contracting authorities have more freedom in choosing the type form of the procedure, and also facilitates access to procedures that involve negotiations.
The rules for carrying out the negotiations are more standardized and provide better security for tenders while allowing the contracting authorities the same flexibility in content and method of the negotiations.
Furthermore, the amended PPA-3 emphasizes measures to prevent conflicts of interest, giving undue advantage and corruption, as the most drastic examples of conflicts of interest can lead to the exclusion of the tenderer from the public procurement procedure.
