Events

European Shipping Week 2020EuDA’s Brainstorming Workshop“Trade Defence Instruments for Services or Enforcement of State Aid Regulations to all non-EU State-owned Enterprises ?”

Public procurement accounts for 15-20% of global GDP and represents a substantial portion of the EU economy and of many other economies around the world.

Transport infrastructures, including waterborne infrastructures represent a significant portion of EU public procurement. The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), for instance, which is a key EU funding instrument for investing in infrastructures, has allocated €23.7 billion out of €30.4 billion for Transport infrastructures.

Europe is faced with unfair trade practices distorting competition in its own public procurement market and outside its territory. In Europe, the main competition distortions from third countries stem from the unchallenged access of their EU State Aid non-compliant State-owned Enterprises (SoEs) to European public procurement markets. Outside Europe, there is more and more evidence that the unfair tied financing practices by SoEs from third countries, especially from China, are closing down dredging markets around the world and getting closer to Europe.

In the context of the new European Commission’s top priority: the “Green Deal”, the future of European sustainable public procurement is at stake and depends on setting the right framework and set of requirements that will award tenders or funding only to companies that respect and apply the same European (environmental, social and economic) values, ethics and rules.

Europe needs to tackle its internal competition issues and for instance consider applying the same competition rules, including State Aid Regulations, to all companies active in Europe. Moreover, in both WTO and EU law, there are no effective trade defence instruments, such as dumping and illegal subsidies against unfair trade practices in trade in services. To fill this gap, Europe should consider applying to the services a Trade Defence Instruments procedure, currently only applicable to goods.

As Europe is the largest donor in the world, its development financing and aid, inside and outside Europe, should be granted to companies complying with a minimum set of European rules, ethics and values.

In this context, the workshop gathered experts from the Commission and the industry to reflect on the following possible way forward: develop Trade Defence Instruments for Services or enforce State Aid Regulations to non-EU State owned enterprises ? Looking at the current procedures, how can they be adapted to tackle these competition issues and what are the challenges ahead ?

Information pack

Workshop detailed programme

Annex 01

Annex 02

Welcome

• Alan Lievens, EuDA Chairman

Workshop’s Overview Presentation

• Paris Sansoglou, EuDA Secretary General

Opening Address

• Karel de Gucht, Former European Commissioner for Trade

Presentations

• Frank Hoffmeister, European Commission – DG TRADE, Head of Unit

• Bojana Dohms, European Commission – DG COMP