Arbitration and Public Procurement: A Match?

Abstract

In 2020, the annual turnover of the sectors subject to public procurement in Sweden alone exceeded SEK 800 billion. There is, therefore, no question that public procurement plays a major role in the Swedish economy. The aim of the public procurement rules is to govern the procurement process from ‘A–Z’, i.e., from the first decision of the contracting authority to commence a procurement, all the way through to the establishment of a contractual relationship between the contracting authority/entity and the winning bidder but, ever since the rules were first introduced in the early 1990s, they have repeatedly been accused of being complex and inflexible.