Brexit and Public Procurement: Transitioning into the Void?

Abstract

On 29 March 2017, the UK notified its intention of leaving the EU. This activated the two-year disconnection period foreseen in Article 50 TEU, thus resulting in a default Brexit at the end of March 2019. The firming up of a draft agreement on a transition period to run until 31 December 2020 can now provide a longer timescale for the Brexit disconnection, as well as some clarity on the process of disentanglement of the UK’s and EU’s legal systems. The draft transition agreement of 19 March 2018 provides explicit rules on public procurement bound to regulate ‘internal’ procurement trade between the UK and the EU for a period of over 15 months. However, the uncertainty concerning the future EU-UK relationship remains, and the draft agreement does not provide any indication on the likely legal architecture for future EU-UK trade, including through public procurement. The draft agreement has thus not suppressed the risk of a ‘cliff-edge’ disconnection post-Brexit, but rather solely deferred it. The transition is currently not into an alternative system of procurement regulation, but rather into the void. There have also been very limited developments concerning the UK’s and EU’s repositioning within the World Trade Organisation Government Procurement Agreement (WTO GPA), which creates additional legal uncertainty from the perspective of ‘external’ trade in procurement markets due to the absence of a ‘WTO rules’ default applicable to public procurement. Against the backdrop of this legal uncertainty, this paper critically assesses the implications for public procurement of the March 2018 draft transition agreement. In particular, the paper identifies three shortcomings that would have required explicit regulation: first, the exclusion from the scope of coverage of the of the draft transition agreement of procurement carried out by the EU Institutions themselves; second, the continued enforcement of the rules on contract modification and termination; and third, the interaction between procurement and other rules. The paper also and flags up some of the areas for future EU-UK collaboration that require further attention. The paper then goes on to revisit the continued uncertainty concerning the EU’s and UK’s position within the WTO GPA. It concludes that it is in both the UK’s and the EU’s interest to reach a future EU-UK FTA that ensures continued collaboration and crystallises current compliance with EU rules, and to build on it to reach a jointly negotiated solution vis-a-vis the rest of WTO GPA parties.