The master's thesis entitled Open Public Procurement Procedure on General Field with an Emphasis on Practical Issues presents the institute of open procedure on general field, which constitutes the implementing basis for all other public procurement procedures and is therefore regulated to the greatest detail. In the first part of the thesis, I describe the course of the procedure in practice and point out ambiguities and certain inefficiencies of the open procedure and of the public procurement system in general. Moreover, I present the issue of too frequent changes to the public procurement legislation, the institute of access to tenders and tampering with tender documentation. In the second part of the thesis, I explore in greater detail the four selected practical issues. They refer to supplementing and amending tenders, to abnormally low tenders, to judicial protection against the decisions of the National Review Commission (hereinafter: NRC) and finally, to the issue of direct payments to subcontractors. As regards the institute of supplementing and amending tenders and the rejection of tenders on the grounds of abnormally low tenders, the contracting authority is granted too wide a margin of discretion, which results in ineffective legal protection for unsuccessful tenderers. Within the context of the third issue raised, I express my doubts regarding the effectiveness of judicial protection which is available against certain decisions adopted by NRC before the Administrative Court since the amendment of the Act Amending the Legal Protection in Public Procurement Procedures Act (ZPVPJN-C). Namely, due to the lack of reformatory powers of the competent court, the issue of non-suspensive appeal and the limitation on claiming damages, I take the view that the judicial instance in the review procedure has not been adequately implemented into the Slovenian legal order. Within the context of the latter, I briefly present the broader issue of payment indiscipline and the lack of clarity as regards the legal arrangement of direct payment of subcontractors.
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