Recommendations for Overcoming Challenges of Whistleblowing in Public Procurement Procedures

Abstract

Public procurement is an area very vulnerable to corruption, which was especially evident during the Covid-19 virus pandemic. Pandemic called for prompt state response, including urgent public procurement procedures that resulted in numerous irregularities (e.g., “Silver Raspberry” case). The possibility of discretionary decision-making contributed to irregularities, and the absence of financial controls, which due to the urgency of the procedure could not be implemented in a timely manner. Therefore, if financial control systems are not able to function smoothly, the question of modalities of strengthening transparency and control in public procurement procedures arises. One possibility to inform the public about irregularities is through whistleblowers. However, this also depends on the level of whistleblower protection in respective national legislation. Whistleblowers in public procurement can face a variety of challenges. Starting from the assumption that the protection of whistleblowers and the whistleblowing process itself needs to be further improved, authors offer recommendations for improving the position of whistleblowers in public procurement procedures at the national level of European countries based on the application of dogmatic-legal method and content analysis.