A Quick and Easy Way of Contracting

When the European Commission needs to hire experts immediately for projects in partner countries, it turns to one contracting instrument to do so: the Framework Contract Beneficiaries. “It is easy to use and it is quick,” Agnes Champion, who leads the European Commission’s Supervision Contrats-cadre in Brussels, said of framework contracts. Champion’s section is responsible for various stages of the procedure, including launching the tender process, signing of contracts, and maintaining the whole framework infrastructure. It deals with any legal modification and functions as a help desk in interpreting the contractual provisions. Its responsibility ends right before contracting at the level of a specific assignment. Champion revealed that the European Commission awards about 1,200 contracts worth 132 million euros yearly. The framework contract period normally lasts four to five years. Each contract has an implementation duration that cannot exceed two years and would entail experts to work less than 260 days. The European Union executive body, according to Champion, increasingly asks contractors to work with local partners in beneficiary countries of its external aid. As such, it looks for experts with experience working in developing nations. The commission, Champion added, also requires contractors to provide experts for the entire project cycle. The full selection criteria are spelled out in EuropeAid’s contract notices. The European Commission screens and signs a group of framework contractors for about a dozen aid topics or lots. Under the Framework Contract Beneficiaries guidelines, the commission must consult three contractors before awarding a contract for a specific service. Consortia are the usual framework contract partners. This, according to Champion, becomes necessary as there are so many countries and so many different requests arriving at the same time. For a framework contractor, there are no guarantees in terms of the tender itself and having a contract with the commission, according to Champion. Although the level of advanced payment is assured, the amount does not go so high because the value of the contract should not be more than 200,000 euros. Although all framework contracts are managed by Brussels, the European Commission’s delegations oversee specific assignments. Roy Dickinson, head of operations at the European Commission’s delegation in Jerusalem, said his office is looking for a wide range of services that can be mobilized quickly. For such assignments, contractors only have a week to send proposals and all prices are fixed. Dickinson, who is in charge of the commission’s aid programs in the Palestinian territories, said tendering becomes less open in crisis situations. In the case of the Jerusalem delegation, he said there will normally be a couple of tenders regularly. But the delegation uses United Nations agencies, other international organizations or framework contractors. Framework partners are usually hired for technical assistance, according to Dickinson, but it is normally freelance consultants who actually do the assignments. Framework partners use individual consultants in a way fairly similar to subcontracting, but on the individual level. According to Champion, subcontracting is authorized on a case-by-case basis. The contractors are free to propose experts, whether freelancers or from other firms. But a subcontractor should adhere to the same rules of eligibility as the framework contractor itself, she noted. The European Commission already started the process for the new framework contracts, whose implementation period will commence in September 2009. The new period is expected to see changes in the way the instrument is managed. Champion said the European Commission is working on setting up a mechanism to ensure the quality of service provided by framework contractors. At present, if a contractor is performing badly in Afghanistan, its track record might not be known in Guinea-Bissau. The plan involves a database that will monitor the performance of framework contractors. The next round may have consortia with fewer member firms. The current period saw big consortia, which realized that there were not so many assignments for all members. According to Champion, there is now a possibility for these firms to engage a third party so they can cover all aspects of the contracts, and therefore meet the selection criteria.