Competition law or the new principle or the new competition principle of public procurement law : which is the more suitable legal instrument for making public procurement more pro-competitive?

Sammanfattning: The Court of Justice of the European Union stated already in its Store Baelt landmark judgment in 1993 that effective competition is one of the main purposes of EU public procurement law. This doctoral thesis analyses two different legal instruments as to how well suited they are to make suppliers and contracting authorities act pro-competitively in a procurement context. The overriding research question is whether competition law or the new competition principle of public procurement law is the more suitable legal instrument for making public procurement more pro-competitive. It is therefore necessary to analyse whether Article 18 (1) of the new EU Classical Sector Public Procurement Directive of 2014, according to which “the design of the procurement shall not be made with the intention … of artificially narrowing competition”, constitutes a new general competition principle, in the same sense as the other established EU principles of public procurement, such as the principle of equal treatment. Since 2007, the Swedish Competition Authority is responsible for enforcing not only competition law but also for enforcing public procurement law. The primary target reader group for this thesis thus consists of law enforcement officers at the Swedish Competition Authority and other competition and public procurement authorities in the EU Member States. Moreover, the thesis provides an overview over relevant Swedish and EU case law on the interaction between competition and public procurement law which also may be useful for judges and legal practitioners.