the Chamber prevented a significant extension of the public procurement review committee’s time limit for resolving disputes

On 2 December, the Riigikogu adopted the draft Act amending the State Fees Act. Thanks to the intervention of the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (the Chamber), a provision was left out of the amendments that would have given the Public Procurement Review Committee the right to extend the deadline for resolving a dispute from the current 30 days up to 60 days.

The extension of the dispute resolution deadline was left out of the Act
In the summer, the Ministry of Finance presented a draft by which it sought to add a provision to the Public Procurement Act granting the Public Procurement Review Committee a new option to extend, for good cause, the deadline for making decisions to up to 60 days. Under the law currently in force, all complaints must be reviewed within 30 days, regardless of their complexity. The amendment would have given the Review Committee (VaKo) the option to extend the examination of a complaint by 1–30 days depending on the complexity of the case or other circumstances.

The Chamber opposed this amendment because extending the deadline would impair entrepreneurs’ access to legal remedies, increase uncertainty when concluding public procurement contracts and run counter to the principle of speedy proceedings, which has been a strength of the Estonian system. To achieve its purpose, the Public Procurement Review Committee must be fast, simple and inexpensive, and if the procedure becomes lengthy and time-consuming, it becomes unreasonable for entrepreneurs and no longer offers a necessary alternative to court proceedings. The Ministry took the Chamber’s position into account, and this provision was left out of the draft.

State fees for turning to the Review Committee will increase
Under the amendments, the state fee for filing a complaint with the Public Procurement Review Committee will be raised from 640 euros to 1280 euros where the estimated value of the public contract is below the international threshold, and from 1280 euros to 2560 euros where the estimated value of the public contract is equal to or exceeds the international threshold. The previous state fee rates for filing public procurement complaints had been in force since 2007, when the Public Procurement Review Committee was established.