The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Changes in Competitiveness in the Public Procurement System

The aim of the article/hypothesis: The impact of the pandemic on the European and global economy is unquestionable. The question is how the epidemiological situation has affected the European public procurement system. The study was limited to assessing the changes in the structure of the procedures used to award public contracts and the possible effects of a lack of dynamics in this respect. The aim of the work is to observe the effects of changes in the structure of tendering procedures and to identify other phenomena in the public procurement system, caused by the pandemic. Methodology: Taking into account the diversity of national solutions in the field of public procurement, resulting both from the legal systems and national practice, an analysis of awarded public contracts was carried out, with particular emphasis on the domestic market. The research was conducted in the direction of determining the changes in preferences of selecting non-competitive procedures, new possibilities of awarding contracts and the analysis of changes in the preferences of the non-competitive procedure on the European Union market. The tools used for the analysis included basic statistical measures and the non-parametric Mann-Whitney test. Results of the research: As a result of the analysis, it was found that there was a statistically significant increase in the share of the non-competitive procedure on the European market. The observation of individual national markets shows that in some Member States there has been a decrease or a very limited increase in the non-competitive mode. This may result from ad hoc legal changes and means that an unknown number of contracts of unknown value was awarded outside the control of the monitoring of the public procurement system.