Introduction

Public procurement is the process whereby government bodies purchase from the market the goods, works and services that they need. Whether buying paper clips, commissioning major projects for the construction of hospitals, schools or offices, or procuring multimillion-pound IT and communications systems, the authorities in question are participating in the public procurement market. It is a market of great economic importance, and in the EC context is of particular concern from the perspective of the single market. In 1994 the market in regulated procurement (including utilities) represented no less than 14 per cent of Community GDP and the UK public procurement market alone has been estimated as worth £117 billion.

In this book we are concerned with the impact of EC law on one facet of public procurement, namely its use to promote social, environmental and other societal objectives that are not necessarily connected with the procurement's functional objective, in the sense of acquiring paper clips, an IT system, or whatever. This phenomenon embraces, for example, government policies against buying from suppliers that use child labour, and policies requiring suppliers to provide employment for ethnic minorities or disabled persons. These have commonly been referred to in Europe as ‘secondary’ procurement policies and in the United States as ‘collateral’ policies. However, for reasons explained below, we prefer the label ‘horizontal’ policies.