Public Procurement Between Emergency and Transparency: Where We Are

. Governments have been pushed to increase public spending quickly and substantially because of the public health disaster brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic and the following economic crisis. Due to the urgency of the situation, rules and procedures for public procurement, which are used to purchase goods and services, have been simplified in an effort to accelerate public action and try to contain the pandemic. The paper aims to investigate whether the major simplification required by the faster procurement procedures has implied, or not, a weakening of the level of transparency. To this end, we have considered data regarding the expenses related to the health emergency through public administration calls for tenders between January 1, 2020, and September 30, 2021. Data analyzed suggests that easing procurement rules in response to COVID-19 shock does not always guarantee the needed transparency. Nevertheless, the extraordinary conditions of extreme urgency make this first evidence a wake-up call, and a stimulus to further analysis in times, when the topic of public expenditure and procurement is at the core of the management of the national recovery and resilience plan. In this perspective, the aim is to investigate some evidence about the actual capacity to preserve the principle of transparency in public procurement considering the recent development of the Italian legislative framework.