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The PPE+ Europe 2024–2028 programme is designed to empower public buyers from centralized purchasing bodies to achieve greater efficiency and value in public spending. Beyond comprehensive training, participating authorities gain exclusive access to bespoke consultancy services delivered by EY Romania -practical, hands-on support tailored to their specific needs. The Lithuanian Public Procurement Office and the Ministry of Economy and Innovation have already leveraged these services with measurable success, setting a strong precedent. 

The Lithuanian Public Procurement Office needed support with developing a tool to help public buyers, policymakers or analysts determine whether a given entity falls under the definition of a contracting authority (as per the provisions of Directive 2014/24/EU and the interpretative principles clarified by the CJEU) - especially in less clear-cut situations, while the Ministry requested support for developing a Life Cycle Costing (LCC)-based award criteria. In both cases the delivery team took a common approach to implementing its services.   

A kick-off meeting provided an opportunity to clarify and align on the scope of the support services, ensuring that assistance addresses both specific needs and is feasible given the available resources. The kick off was followed by a co-design and planning phase, focusing on developing and agreeing on a concept paper for the consulting package. Only after this thorough preparation did the actual implementation begin. The last steps were the final delivery and the validation of the solution.  

The key activities conducted for the Lithuanian Public Procurement Office included analysis of EU legislation and CJEU relevant cases, a comparative practice review, development of the assessment tool, and development of instructions on how to use the tool. The work for the Ministry of Economy and Innovation focussed on reviewing how other national authorities in the EU have integrated LCC approaches in public procurement procedures, developing a multi-criteria scoring matrix and applying it in practice, providing a practical test case for future implementation and replication, and developing LCC criteria including relevant cost components such as acquisition, operation, maintenance, and end-of-life treatment. 

The results of these consultancy services can be found under the Resources section of the Community of Practice:

• Access the Tool for the Assessment of Contracting Authorities status under Directive 2014/24/EU
• Access the Life Cycle Costing (LCC) Evaluation Tool