As Romania is a member of the European Union (EU), its public procurement legislation (PPL) reflects the values, principles and procedures provided by EU Directives, namely - Directive 2014/24/EU, Directive 2014/25/EU, Directive 2014/23/EU. The main body of PPL of Romania is the following (excluding the secondary legislation):
- Law no. 98/2016 on Public Procurement
- Law no. 99/2016 on Utilities Procurement
- Law no. 100/2016 on Works Concession Contracts and Services Concession Contracts
There are additional special rules for several sectors:
- Defence procurement
- Transportation
- Procurement with European Funds
Romania ranks high on the TPPR rating, implying that the legislation and its set-up potentially provide for the public procurement system to be efficient, based on principles of accountability and competitiveness.
The law defines a single portal, where procurement procedures are to be handled and information stored - https://sicap-prod.e-licitatie.ro/pub/participants. This is a relatively new public procurement portal, which fits contemporary standards of public procurement transparency, such as – availability of machine-readable information, possibility to download data existing on the portal. The portal has interesting features as well, for instance, the register of portal users is open and can be extracted, filtered according to town, county, status and type (contracting authority/supplier).
Even though the official portal is the one mentioned above, certain information is still stored on the old public procurement portal - https://www.e-licitatie.ro/Public/Common/Content.aspx?f=PublicHomePage. Additionally, there is a separate portal for media related procurement with EU funds - http://publicitatepublica.ro/index.php, certain agricultural products, services and works https://achizitii.afir.info.
Romania has solid legislative framework when it comes to pre-tendering and tendering phases. The legislation and sub-legal acts ensure that the planning and announcement of tenders is transparent and efficient, it provides legal ground for fair treatment during tendering phase and possibility for as legal remedies (dispute settlement procedures are available).
Nevertheless, Romania has serious flaws when it comes to transparency in the post-tendering phase (contract implementation phase). Most of the information about this phase is absent from the legal framework, hence, information on contract performance, scans of contracts (full), contract amendments, acts of delivery and acceptance (full scans or parts of information) are not available on the public procurement portal.
Public Procurement Legislation available at the following – link.
Public Procurement Portal of Romania – link.