The Spanish Constitution reserves the competence to adopt basic laws on public procurement to the central State, and Autonomous Communites only have competence for the implementation of public procurement (with the only exception of Navarra, which has a special regime). Traditionally, public procurement has been regulated under special public laws, which do not only establish a framework for the formation of contracts, but also for their execution, modification and, eventually, termination. Therefore, administrative courts have traditionally had competence to control the entire life cycle of public procurement. The regulation of public contracts has tended to be comprehensive, both by including contracts not previously regulated at EU level, such as services concessions) and by extending substantially the same rules to contracts well below the EU thresholds (with the only exception of minor contracts). The only distinction for contracts above EU thresholds has related to their advertisement, as well as to access to the special challenge mechanism created to give effectiveness to the reform of the EU remedies directives after 2007.

2. Transposition of the 2014 EU Public Procurement Package

Spain is notably late in the transposition of the revised EU rules. Despite having started preparations for the transposition well in advance of the publication in the OJEU of the final versions of the new Directives, the process eventually stalled. As of Spring 2017, with the conclusion of the first phase of Parliamentary debates and amendments, there are over 1,000 amendments to the draft transposing law under consideration. The current expectation is that, all going well, the Parliamentary process should conclude in the fall of 2017 and the new law should be in force by the end of the year.