In 2020 François Lichère, member of the EPLG and Professor of Public Law at Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University, founded The Chair of Public Contract Law (Chaire de droit des contrats publics) of which he is the director. In addition to Professor Lichère, the research team includes the Post-doctoral Students Adeline Meyner-Pozzi, Valentin Lamy and Oriane Sulpice.

The main purpose of the Chair is to build a network of interested buyers and awarding authorities, contracting companies, public institutions and academic specialists, in order to better understand the implementation of legal rules on public contracts and contribute to the development of contractual, textual and jurisprudential rules better suited to public bodies and companies. Taking advantage of the favourable environment offered by the university, the aim of the Chair is therefore to set up a place for both conducting in-depth and objective research and fostering the dialogue between the different stakeholders involved.

This project starts from a double observation. On the one hand, the effective application of the rule in this area remains largely unknown. On the other hand, the growing difficulties between public entities and companies in the framework of the execution of public contracts (public procurement and concessions in particular) lead to costly litigation and to a loss of mutual trust, leading, in turn, to heated disputes.

The Chair’s research projects focus on: 

1. Health crisis and public contracts (2020-2021)
2. The relationship between procurement rules and execution difficulties in public contracts (2021 to come)
3. Prevention of corruption in public contracts (2021-2022)
4. Public contracts and sustainable development (2021-2023)

Among the activities carried out by the Chair there are the realization of quantitative and qualitative surveys, the organization of seminars, conferences and training courses for legal professionals to disseminate research results, methods, best practices and recommendations, and the contribution to the definition of new legal rules. 

The Chair’s structure includes a Scientific Council, whose mission is to approve the scientific program and the research methods, to assess the scientific integrity of the studies in order to guarantee the objectivity of the results and to set up the dissemination of good practices, a Strategic Organization Committee composed of lawyers representing the partners of the Chair, whose mission is to suggest projects and define dissemination and confidentiality policies and to participate in discussion seminars with a view to drawing up recommendations. Finally, the Chair also includes a College of Experts, composed of lawyers from various institutions specialized in public contract law, its mission is to give its opinion on the preliminary reports produced by the Chair. 

As of November 2021, the Chair’s has issued two research reports: Health crisis and public contracts (2020-2021); The links between procurement rules and enforcement difficulties in public contracts (2021), available at www.chairedcp.univ-lyon3.fr.

The Annual conference of the Chair of Public Contracts Law on “Discussion in public contracts” was held on 24 September 2021 and a symposium on the same theme will take place on 16 November 2021 on the Chair’s website.

In 2021 the Chair also obtained seed funding from the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF).