Proposal for a Council Decision establishing the position to be taken on behalf of the European Union within the Committee on Government Procurement as regards the draft decision on arbitration procedures pursuant to Article XIX:8 of the Revised Agreement on Government Procurement

The revised WTO Agreement on Government Procurement ("the GPA") which entered into force on 6 April 2014 lays down a revamped legal framework applicable by the GPA Parties to cover procurement. In this context, the revised agreement provided for the possibility for GPA Parties to use arbitration procedures in cases where objections regarding proposed rectification, transfer of an entity from one annex to another, withdrawal of an entity or other modification of a Party's annexes to Appendix I were raised and the objection could not be resolved through consultations.

In view of the entry into force of the revised GPA, the Parties have extensively discussed the content of such arbitration procedures, considering various options to be applied in case of objections to proposed modification of a Party's procurement coverage, and reached a consensus on the matter. In this regard, a draft decision on arbitration procedures has been prepared. In order to adopt this draft decision, the Commission needs to be enabled by the Council to express the Union’s opinion within the GPA Committee on the adoption of the decision.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2016)172: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2016:172:FIN

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