The Fortieth Final Provision of theLaw 11/2020 on General State Budgets for the year 2021has modified art. 159 of theLaw 9/2017, of November 8, on Public Sector Contracts, by which the Directives of the European Parliament and of the Council 2014/23/EU and 2014/24/EU, of February 26, 2014, are transposed into the Spanish legal system.
This modification affects the thresholds established for the application of the simplified open procedure. Starting January 1, 2021, this procedure will apply toworks contracts whose estimated value is equal to or less than 2,000,000 euros, and to thesupply and service contracts whose estimated value is equal to or less than 139,000 euros.
On the other hand, it modifies section 6 of art. 159 of the LCSP providing that the abbreviated simplified procedure will be applied to theworks contracts whose estimated value is equal to or less than 80,000 eurosandsupply and service contracts with an estimated value of less than 60,000 euros, except those whose purpose is intellectual benefits.
Likewise, and in relation to those contracts that are going to be financed with European funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, with the aim that this procedure is applied to a greater number of contracts, allowing more agility in their processing, theRoyal Decree-Law 36/2020, of December 30, which approves urgent measures for the modernization of the Public Administration and for the execution of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, raises these thresholds by introducing other specific thresholds that will apply to this type of contracts.
Thus, article 52 establishes two requirements to process contracts financed with European funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan through the simplified procedure:
- a)That these are contracts with an estimated value lower than the threshold established by the European Commission for contracts subject to harmonized regulation. That is, in the case ofworks contracts that have an estimated value of less than 5,350,000 euros; and in the case of supply and service contracts, their estimated value is less than 139,000 euros, in the case of contracts awarded by the General Administration of the State, its Autonomous Bodies, or the Managing Entities and Common Services of the Social Security and 214,000 euros, in the case of different supply contracts.
- b) That among the award criteria provided for in the specifications there are none that can be evaluated by value judgment or, if there are any, their weighting does not exceed twenty-five percent of the total, except in the case that the contract has as its object intellectual services, such as engineering and architectural services, in which its weighting may not exceed forty-five percent of the total.
Likewise, the abbreviated simplified procedure, in accordance with the provisions of art. 51, will apply toworks contracts with an estimated value of less than €200,000 and supply and service contracts with an estimated value of less than €100,000that are going to be financed with funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, except those whose purpose is intellectual benefits.
All these modifications have come into force on January 1, 2021.
