Agris Repšs Partner agris.repss@sorainen.com
	Raivo Raudzeps Senior Associate raivo.raudzeps@sorainen.com

On 1 August this year, another round of voluminous changes to the Public Procurement Law came into force. We draw your attention to those changes that in our opinion are most important:

• An option has been introduced not to apply the law to small parts of procurement.
• The implementation procedure of the so-called “B” part service procurement has additional provisions introduced.
• Small procurements must not require major preparations. There has been a supplement to the number of cases when these procurements can be organised without publishing a notice about the planned contract, while options to challenge the authority's decision have been limited to two court instances.
• In future, any procurement contract should be for a term not exceeding five years unless any of the preconditions set by law stipulates a longer contract term.
• Now the law has established that only insignificant changes are allowed to an already-concluded contract or general agreement. The law lists separate cases when significant changes are allowed.
• Cases are set when it will be obligatory to indicate the sub-contractors involved in performing a construction and service contract.
• The personnel and sub-contractors involved can now be changed without coordination with the contracting authority except separate cases set by law when the authority's approval will be needed.
• Evasion of taxes and similar payments has become an obligatory ground to exclude a candidate or a tenderer.
• A candidate or a tenderer can also be excluded if sub-contractors plus persons who the candidate or tenderer would rely on in confirming its qualification fall under any of the exclusion conditions.
• Specific types of tender security have been set, while the maximum amount and term of tender security has been limited.
• A closed and open tender must be suspended if only one candidate or tenderer complies with selection criteria, apart from some exceptions set by law.

Taking into account that the total amount of changes is much larger than indicated here, we suggest you take a look at all the changes. If you need legal assistance in issues related to public procurement please contact your legal counsel.