The Government Deleted Article 13 After Siljanovska's Veto, but Behind-Closed-Doors Procurement up to 10,000 Euros Stays

At its 129th session, Parliament adopted the amendment deleting Article 13 from the changes to the Law on Public Procurement. The amendment was signed by VMRO-DPMNE MPs Bojan Stojanoski, Dafina Stojanoska and Brane Petrushevski. The aim is clear: to get the law through after President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova refused to sign the decree.

What the president objected to

On 4 November, citing Article 75, paragraph 3 of the Constitution, Siljanovska-Davkova sent a letter to Parliament saying she would not promulgate the changes voted on 26 October. Her objection concerned the terms of the commission members. The existing rule provided for five years with the right to be reappointed once, so ten years at most. The new wording allowed repeated appointment with no clear limit. According to the president, that is legally imprecise and leaves room for a concentration of power over decisions on spending public money.

"By deleting this article we fully accept the president's objections," Stojanoski said, adding that the changes are part of the Reform Agenda and bring digital tools and artificial intelligence to the Public Procurement Bureau, for less corruption. Sounds nice. But if it took a veto from Vodno, the presidential residence, for someone to notice that a term with no limit is a problem, how carefully was the rest of the law written?

What stayed in the law

The opposition warned about completely different provisions, and those were not touched. The threshold for purchases without a tender, so-called behind-closed-doors procurement, rises from 5,000 to 10,000 euros. The requirement for Bureau approval of contracts without a public call is abolished. The appeal fee for firms jumps from the current 5 to 200 euros to 150 to 600 euros, which deters small firms most of all. The "lowest price" criterion is removed, and access to the Bureau's procurement data is set to become paid.

"Are we going to have 100,000-euro bulls again?" SDSM MP Sanja Lukarevska asked back when she was demanding the law be pulled from the agenda. Her colleague Fatmir Bytyqi now claims the opposition proposed this very deletion during the committee debate, and that this may be the first time the Law on Public Procurement is passed without a public consultation. SDSM filed 2,000 amendments to block the law.

So the president drew one line and the majority respected exactly that one. Everything else that can be done with public money behind closed doors stays. Who will count those 10,000 euros once contracts start being signed without the Bureau and without free access for journalists?