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Phase 3 – Tendering and award criteria The Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts requires that public procurements exceeding the national thresholds are tendered out, and that a public notification on the competitive tendering is available in the HILMA portal (www. hankintailmoitukset.fi). Small procurements below national thresholds may also be reported in HILMA. In the interest of preventing labour exploitation and human trafficking, public tendering should be considered in high-risk sectors to ensure transparency and non-discrimination, even though less cumbersome procedures can be used in small-scale contracts than contracts covered by the Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts. Exclusion criteria and suitability requirements for tenderers and requirements concerning the subject of the procurement
Contracting entities may set requirements for the subject of the procurement and the supplier providing it. The suitability requirements and minimum requirements are binding under the Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts. If the suitability requirements are not met, the tenderer is excluded from the tendering procedure. However, according to the Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts, the conditions of suitability for tenderers must be proportionate to the subject of the procurement, in addition to which the principles of public procurement, such as equal, open and non-discriminatory treatment of tenderers, must also be observed in the procurement procedure. The mandatory exclusion criteria for tenderers are laid down in section 80 and the suitability requirements are laid down in sections 83-86 of the Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts.14 The mandatory exclusion criteria includes certain serious crimes if less than five years have passed from the conviction. Contracting entities must request an extract from the criminal record in procurements exceeding the EU threshold, but contracting entities may, if they so wish, also request extracts from the criminal record of responsible persons and on the payment of taxes in procurements below the thresholds.15 For example, parties who have been convicted of human trafficking, tax fraud or occupational pension insurance fraud must be excluded from tendering. The grounds for exclusion also include extortionate work discrimination (Criminal Code, Chapter 47 3(a), work discrimination (Criminal Code, Chapter 47 3), an employment agency offence (Criminal Code, Chapter 47 6) and the unauthorized use of foreign labour (Criminal Code, Chapter 47 6 (a)). 14 The Public Procurement Advisory Unit (JHNY) has created a Finnish language template to check whether the winner of the tender has a criminal background.
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Ministry of Employment and Economy of Finland (2017): Guide to Socially Responsible Procurement. MME Publications 3/2017. 15
