Market Court facing two-year backlog of complaints about public procurements

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Finland's Market Court is facing a backlog of complaints concerning public tenders. The large number of cases pending means that it can take up to a year to get a decision on a complaint.
      Just three years ago cases were generally heard within three or four months. At present, the average wait for a ruling from the Market Court is eight months.
     
The current backlog is 560 cases, which is equivalent to two year's work. Chief Judge Olli Mäkinen fears that by the end of the year, the handling time of cases may stretch to a full year.
      The Market Court seeks to hand down rulings on public procurement as quickly as possible, as delays are often costly, and at times, issues of public health are at stake. Consequently, other activities of the court suffer. For instance, getting a decision on a complaint ff unfair restrictions on competition takes an average 35.6 months.
     
No immediate end to the situation is in sight.
      Chief Judge Mäkinen notes that public procurement involves large sums of money, and that the number of lawyers specialised in procurement matters is growing. He says that not even a new law on the matter has decreased the case load.
      Mäkinen calculates that the situation could be eased by appointing three more judges to the Market Court. Unfortunately, there are plans to cut 200 people from Finnish courts in the coming five years.
      Another way to ease the load would be to allow some cases to be decided at a lower level. "Couldn't a board of some kind give statements and recommendations on smaller matters?" Mäkinen suggests.
     
Local authorities use tenders for more than a million public procurements a year, and a small percentage of them - between 500 and 600 cases - end up in the Market Court. Ten percent of the complaints are from the Helsinki region.
      Mäkinen says that large cities such as Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa usually handle their procurements well; small municipalities are a bigger problem.
      Johanna Lähde of the Ministry of Trade and Industry notes that there are people in some municipalities who handle procurements as a part-time job, and are not familiar with all aspects of competition.
      The lack of skill sometimes leads to mistakes, which corporate lawyers react to eagerly.
      "A group of lawyers has emerged in Finland, specialised in procurement legislation", Olli Mäkinen says.
      One factor in the equation is that filing a procurement complaint costs only about EUR 200, and plaintiffs are never liable for court costs.


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