Сучасний дискурс трактування базових дефініцій понятійно-категоріального апарату державного управління у сфері публічних закупівель

Abstract

Problem setting. Today, the public procurement system of Ukraine is at such a development stage that requires a rapid response to emerging challenges and continuous improvement, primarily due to Ukraine's movement towards the EU (i.e. internal factors encompassing further hardwork on the implementation of the Association Agreement) and transformation processes within the EU (external influences).The introduction of the term “public procurement” into the active vocabulary of the Ukrainian language contributed to the replacement of the previous historical categories – “government procurement” and “government order”. The viability of the “public procurement” neologism in Ukraine turned out to be so high that the legislator was forced to recognize it de jure.Recent research and publications analysis. Creating an efficient public procurement system in Ukraine was the subject of extensive scientific discussions among national researchers who worked on government procurement and, later on, public procurement, such as O. Altsyvanovych, O. Krytenko, S. Levon, S. Naumenko, Y. Ovramets , G. Pinkas, V. Smyrychynsky, N. Tkachenko, J. Tsymbalenko and others.The conducted analysis of the relevant scientific researches and legal acts of Ukraine and the EU reveals ambiguity and, in some cases, semantic inaccuracy of such notions as “government procurement”, “public procurement”, “public procurement system” etc.The paper objective is to reveal the essence of the basic concepts of the contemporary public procurement system.The paper main body. Law of Ukraine No. 922-VII On Public Procurement dated 25.12.2015 defines public procurement as follows: “public procurement (hereinafter called procurement) is purchasing by the contracting authority of goods, works and services in the manner prescribed by this Law”. Thus, the legislator did not sustain a requirement of semantic unambiguity of a legal norm and provided no clear and concise explanation of this term. Therefore we have different semantic interpretations and confusion both among the scientific community and the legal actors falling within the purview of the law.In the vast majority of sources, researchers do not make any difference between the terms “government procurement” and “public procurement”, and often use them synonymously, moreover, such a change in wording, in their opinion, is not explained by the change in semantics.In some cases, even more confusion has been caused by the use of a borrowed word which is a non-phonetic transcription of the English word “procurement”, or by the use of the outdated notion “government order”, which, in our opinion, can be regarded as a historical forerunner of “public procurement”.It should be pointed out that the content of the legal system, as well as the wordstock of the language are closely connected with the history and culture of the native-speaking people. Any social change is directly reflected in its vocabulary with the passage of time.Conclusions of the research. In our opinion, the difference between government and public procurement is most notably reflected in the perception of the role and tasks assigned to the state, which involves the philosophy issues. In countries of a sustainable democracy it is generally accepted that the “government” money simply does not exist, there is only money of taxpayers who have the right to know how the funds collected in a form of taxes are spent on, as well as to be sure that this money is used in the most efficient way and for the benefit of every citizen and the society as a whole.The concept of “public procurement” demands serious philosophical thought because publicity means openness, transparency and, most of all, accountability to the people for disbursing funds that do not belong to the state (government procurement with the government funds), but to the taxpayers of this state (public procurement with the budget funds), which was accurately transposed from the public governance practice of our western neighbors with a stable democracy and duly reflected in the fundamental principles of public procurement under adaption in Ukraine.Now, given the importance of operation of the efficient and transparent public procurement system, the reform initiated in Ukraine does not involve simple replacing of the sectoral law, it is characterized by a conceptually new approach to responsible disbursement of public funds and management behavior, thus requiring in-depth researches and accurate definitions of the applicable terms.