New thesis on damages and public procurement

As the title reveals, Sara Hovis's thesis deals with public procurement damages – the obligation of contracting authorities and entities to pay damages to tenderers due to a breach of procurement rules. The point of departure is private law, but EU Law plays an important part of the study as well.

“Key issues in tort law, such as liability, causation and estimation of damages, have given their own interpretations in the field of public procurement damages. We can now truly speak of this issue as a specific form of damages. I have tried to understand how legal norms from different areas of law affect this form of damages, where the norms originate from and how they interact with each other, but also how they can clash with each other. This is related to the fact that different interests compete with each other in the law of public procurement damages”, explains Sara Hovi.

A recurring theme of the thesis is how the rules on damages in public procurement law are affected by the duty for EU member states to effectively enforce EU procurement law on the national level.

“I believe that the Swedish legislator and Supreme Court have, to a considerable extent and by interpreting EU law in a certain way, shaped the rules on public procurement damages in order to facilitate the tenderer’s action for damages. The influence of EU law has also been strong when it comes to public procurement damages that could have been treated as a purely national legal issue.

Read more about Sara Hovi and her thesis in April's doctoral student portrait!