Intermediate Body as an Entity Supervising Public Procurement Market in the Context of EU Funds

When projects co-financed from the EU funds are implemented by their beneficiaries, the task of the bodies involved in management and supervision over the funds is to ensure an adequate project implementation—that is compliance with UE and domestic laws, relevant guidelines, programme documents, and applicable project financing agreement (or decision on project financing, or any other applicable document). In this context, public procurement procedures need to be considered. Since an adequate project implementation by beneficiaries generally involves a stricter financial regime applicable to spending funds, the supervision over contract awarding procedures becomes critical in importance. This task has been assigned to various bodies involved in the management and supervision over the EU funds and playing various roles within this system. One of them may be an intermediate body of an operational programme. The purpose of the present chapter is to examine the legal status of an intermediate body as an entity supervising public procurement market in the context of EU funds—taking into account the specific nature of the system of EU projects implementation. The following aspects will be discussed: general overview of the intermediate body, nature of intermediate body from the perspective of applicable provisions of EU and domestic legal regulations, supervisory tasks of intermediate body in the public procurement sector, and supervision over performance of the tasks assigned to intermediate bodies.