The changes to the public contract directives and the story they tell about how EU law works

The new rules for public procurements and concessions were published early in 2014.The reform process laid bare the different preferences of and the consequent tensions among the different actors of legislation. Theresult are provisions which are innovative in many respects, even where the rationale of the law is the same, but also very complex, and at times obscure, making this area even more technical that it already was. This paper gives an introduction to the most relevant novelties in the law, at the same time, it highlights and discusses a number of issues in the law making process and problematic areas in the substantive rules enacted. The article aims not to describe all the new provisions in detail, but to analyse rather closely specific aspects in order to help understand, and interpret, EU public contract law.