Willem Janssen  00:00

Welcome to Bestek, the public procurement podcast. Today, Marta and I are discussing equal pay standards in public procurement and PhD courses.

About Bestek  00:14

Welcome to Bestek, the public procurement podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Willem Janssen and Dr. Marta Andhov discuss public procurement law issues, their love of food, and academic life. In each episode, Willem, Marta, and their guests search for answers to intriguing public procurement questions. This is Bestek. Let’s dish up public procurement law.

Marta Andhov  00:39

Hello, Hi.

Willem Janssen  00:42

Good. Finally, we get to speak again.

Marta Andhov  00:44

Yes, well, we’ve been speaking quite often recently, but finally, we are managing to actually record this episode.

Willem Janssen  00:52

Exactly, because I mean, for those of you that were waiting for the next episode, we’ve tried to record a couple of times but failed miserably. Hopefully, this all works out because I’m very excited to talk to you a bit about your research coming out in August and the Nordic Journal of European law and an article that you wrote together with the Bergþór Bergsson. It’s, and as we say, in Dutch of mouthful. Equal Pay, EU public procurement law and the free movement of services in the internal market – a case study of mandatory Icelandic ÍST85 standard. So, before we delve into that, we decided we’d give a little bit of a shout out to some of our, say loyal listeners is that something we could say?

Marta Andhov  01:38

Yes, absolutely! Some great people that help us share the knowledge and information about this podcast that we really appreciate.

Willem Janssen  01:48

So, we’ve got three, right. We went through some of the people that have been so kind to share episodes have been so kind to comment or discuss things. For today shout out we wanted to just mention here, Hildur Georgsdottir, Erik Plas, Adam Gromnicaif I say that correctly.

Marta Andhov  02:09

Close enough.

Willem Janssen  02:10

Yeah, together. We’ll figure it out. I was doing Dutch, Icelandic and a bit of Slovak, right?

Marta Andhov  02:16

Czech actually.

Willem Janssen  02:18

Czech.

Marta Andhov  02:18

Yeah.

Willem Janssen  02:20

Learning, learning every day. So, thank you so much for anyone that’s been listening, particularly those three for today, but I’m sure we will be able to mention some more in the future. So, for today’s episode, we’ll be looking at equal pay standards in public procurement. And for dessert, we’ll be discussing PhD courses, right? What are the courses that we….what are our own experiences with doing a PhD and the courses that we took at the time, what inspired us about them, and perhaps also a shout out to two events that are coming up in the future? But before we get to the desert, we first need to go to main, clearly. Perhaps we could start at the at the beginning of the research that you did. I think that starts with explaining what we’re going to call ÍST85 standard. Maybe it’s IST85, but it’s a piece of legislation from Iceland.

03:18

Yes, it is. So, I think actually, if you allow me, I would just want to a couple of words give a context to how this piece of research came to life, because I think it showcased two really interesting aspects. One, my co-author, used to be my student, my master student right now. Fantastic legal counsel up here in Copenhagen, in DLA Piper. He is very talented. So this has been you know, from, again, our academic starting point, very fruitful and very rewarding process to work with your student to see how someone really got interested in your research area. So that’s one thing. But a second thing, the way how this started is another fantastic colleague from Iceland, Dagmar Sigurðardóttir. It’s always very difficult with the Icelandic.

Willem Janssen  04:11

There’s always a daughter there, right?

Marta Andhov  04:13

Yes, yes. Dagmar used to work in Ríkiskaup, which was the, which is still the central purchasing body in Iceland. I had a chance of visiting them and doing some presentation, some training for them. We started to discuss this at that time that this new standard became mandatory, and they were rolling out this new legislation to apply in whole Iceland. The question that up there was an issue is:  Whether can we apply it within public procurement? Is that even allowed that fit? People were very confused and people were very stressed….You know, this is this is where we’re sort of research, societal impact and really practice merge all together. So, after all these…

Willem Janssen  05:09

Emotions are very good motivator for research?

Marta Andhov  05:12

I also thought that, you know, this was a really great situation which I was hoping to do a type of work that hopefully can be helpful to those working in practice. So, have a real applicability of a research, right? So that’s the context of this. Now, in couple of words, what are we actually talking about the standard that Willem mentioned, this is IST85. This is a standard of Icelandic equal pay that has been introduced in Iceland in 2012. The purpose of that, of course, was to close the gender pay gap. What became very interesting legislative goal at some point was that the Icelandic government passed a law ultimately stipulating that from the first January 2018, so good three years ago, now, this specific equal pay standard will become… right now it’s already in past…will become mandatory for all companies, with 25 or more employees operating on the Icelandic market. Since then, this is also interesting, I think the law has been repealed and replaced with the newest version coming in January 2021. Because there were some hurdles along the way. So that standard, I think very clearly shows some type of practices that we can observe broadly, right?  With a new, more pro sustainable market ambitions when we starting to use more extensively, voluntary certifications, voluntary standards, and we apply them also in public procurement and the question: Whether and to what extent we can actually suddenly start to mandate them and what challenges this brings along the way? Also, this type of standard in play had nothing to do with public procurement, when it was designed or when the legislation was passed on. It was to be applicable towards everything and then the question was just: Well, if this becomes a mandatory law of the land, to what extent we also apply it within public procurement. So, that’s how the type of legislative process looked like and what was the ambitions behind this standard?

Willem Janssen  07:46

So what was the what was in the end the reason that they ended up making this link with public procurement? Because one could also argue: Well, if it if it’s a law that applies in the land, why do we even need to we can install different enforcement methods? Right? We could do auditing; we could check it via supervisory authority. Why did they end up making this link with public procurement in the end?

Marta Andhov  08:07

Well, I think that it’s similarly as with many other… if those are social and environmental consideration, that is a matter of policy, it is a matter of strategy, and it’s more and more the type of approach of all hands on deck, which I often refer to specifically in context of climate change, right? It’s not to say that public procurement is the tool to use to actually enforce this, but it’s one of the tools and the question is, well, why wouldn’t we use it? Of course, the criticism stones can be well, it’s not fitting, right? It’s sort of us trying to fit a square to a circle, right? That may not be the best option, and that’s the reason that the standard has been not applied in all procurements. But the beginning question was whether we can and to what extent we cannot raise a question of whether you have that. So, it’s a matter of also I think ensuring equal pay within public sector as an importance, and of course, in public sector also has this possibility of enforcing it through motivating the market. Right, we’re going back to the role of a state here, whether we can also talk about contracting authorities, as creators of the markets or to not the market to do the right thing, so to speak.

Willem Janssen  09:41

That’s an interesting point. I think, for the for the listeners that have already listened to previous episodes, maybe I can do a little shout out to this move towards mandatory requirements or and I think this is a great case study as you refer to it in your article as well. Should your interest have been sparked let’s put it this way. Maybe you can… I don’t know if we can suggest people to stop listening now and tune into other episodes, but perhaps afterwards, it might be nice to listen to episode 8 of Bestek, the public procurement podcast about the Tim case and Article 18, which you also briefly refer to in your, in your research, or episode 3 on the Green Deal and movements towards male mandatory requirements, or lastly, of what Marta and I think is our best episode yet, but we’ll let you decide if that’s really true is number 11 on the role of courts in relation to these such requirements, that gives you a good, I would say three hours of listening time before you can come back to this episode, but we’ll let you decide if you actually do that. So, coming back to your introduction, he briefly explained what IST85 what it does, what the background is? I think what’s interesting is you mentioned that, that it wasn’t meant to be a mandatory law, but became a mandatory law. This is also something that we’ve seen in the Netherlands with the proportionality guide – a guide in public procurement, stipulating each step of the way of the public procurement process of what the proportionality principle requires of contracting authorities, and then Parliament looked at it and thought – that’s a great guide, we’ll make it obligatory. I think that’s been a very positive step, but it can also be, just a side note, this is the only ever published law in the Netherlands that has colour schemes. Everything’s black and white, but public procurement holds this allegedly questionable honour of having the only published because it wasn’t meant to be a law, right? It was meant to be just a guide. So there’s a bit of colour in public procurement as well, or at least in the Netherlands. But going back to that, and I think, if I may summarise and please correct me if I’m wrong is like this crossroads of different fields of law, that’s where it becomes interesting, right? Equal Pay law, you probably procurement law, and the free movement law becomes very prevalent, because it was made mandatory, right, perhaps something that wasn’t meant to be mandatory, all of a sudden became mandatory.

Marta Andhov  12:13

Yeah, and, you know, I think this is a specific case study on very specific type of social law, if we thinking again, within the framework of sustainable public procurement, equal pay very kind of now, but I think that what I really like about working on this piece was, as you mentioned, it was case study that could be replicated and showcase the challenges, the risk, the red flags with all different types of rights. Because, I think some issues will be similar. What has been particularly problematic in context of what you mentioned, is voluntary towards mandatory in context of this Icelandic standard was also the fact that who holds the copyright to the to the standard is actually this organisation called Icelandic standards, which is not unanimous by no means within government, right? So also, who developed it who holds the copyright who has the right to amend it, ultimately, is another organisation, and they also throughout the legislative process, actually, complaint saying that they’ve been not asked to comment and contribute to making this standard mandatory. There was at some point, also a criticism towards the fact that standard was to be paid for, and the payment for the standard was expensive. Later on the whole implementation rolling out your processes or within your company to actually be able to obtain the standards were very expensive and long some in time. So, there has been a lot of criticism with introduction of that. But of course, I think this is also to be understood: If you’re starting to make such a change, it will take time. If you look in couple years, I think that it will be considered much more positively, and not to mention also that this too, going to bring it back again, a little bit to public procurement, problematic for SMEs, right? The SMEs that are kind of on the border, because up here we’re talking 25 plus employees, right? So those ones that are 25, 26, those will be the ones that will be struggling a little bit, but the government issued guidelines and helped to how to how to go to this process. If we look at the broader picture to what you already alluded to Willem. Well, just as a disclaimer, I won’t go within our podcast today is with Iceland, of course is particular because it’s EEA countries not member state of EU. So part of the article does this whole analysis of how you… In other words, can we draw on the experience of Icelanders? The conclusion is yes, yes, that actually very often they particularly European Court of Justice cases are being referred to in the judgments of EEA court and so on and so forth. There are differences, and the EFTA court sometimes decides differently with the European Court of Justice, but as a mere generalization, as drawing upon the experiences in Iceland, is not very far-fetched. There is a good point of saying that the practices can be analyzed in light of EU law. Then when we looking specifically on and if that is the IST85 standard, or if there’s any other equal pay standards for what you will do? Well, you need to analyse it against couple different aspects when it comes to EU law, right? First and foremost, you need to analyse it against the primary law against the treaties, making sure that this is not a restriction to trade, or a measure having equivalent effect to the restrictions. What that ultimately means is that whether the tool that you want to apply whether the legislative measure that you want to set in place, is not making it more difficult for the providers from other European countries. It’s not making it more difficult for them to actually participate in your market, right? This whole notion of open internal market. Up here, of course, the question, or the comment could be easily seen that: Well, this could be quite problematic, if you suddenly need to roll out this whole big process of ensuring equal pay within your companies. Now, this is where this became very passionate project for me, because it’s a woman. Also, you know, when I was doing that analysis, it struck me at some point that what we cannot say that EU law is actually reason why you cannot ask for equal pay. It doesn’t make much sense, does it? But when this became also really clear is what happens very often, I think, within the EU law is that you have different pockets of law, that are regulated on EU level that develop independently, and are not anyhow speaking to each other, right? So up here, the whole internal market rules and provisions and legislation. On other hand side you have the human rights, the environmental law, the social law, equal pay here being another example, because we have equal pay law, actually, within EU treaties, within the EU directives, it is something that is regulated, it is something that actually calls for, ensuring that right being enforced. However, where the challenge here occurs is ultimately, by what means you do that, right? Because equally as the procurement directives, the equal pay are regulated by directives, which means that they bind you to the effect but they do not bind you to the process how you’re going to reach it, right?  That is left to the discretion of member states. So up here, the challenge would be if we would want to consider the lens of the Icelandic equal pay standard. Well, to give you an example, let’s say German company would bid in the Icelandic tender, and the German company would say, well, but we have equal pay law within our country, I obey by it, we meet that we don’t need to obtain that standard, and then of course, here, you’re getting into the conversation about mutual recognition and other big European principle, etc, etc. So to what extent you can impose that? The final element here is, of course, that more specifically, on issues of justification. So, if we, and I think this is what we speculated within our analysis, is that if for whatever reason, the principle of mutual recognition is not respected or applied in contexts of the Icelandic standard, or then most presumably, that might be a restriction or trade or the measure have an equivalent effect, and then you need to look at the justification because when you arrive at that point, it’s not to say you cannot have it. Then you need to look okay, can you use any of the justifications. The justifications that we have available are the public policy, public security or public health. Though that list ultimately is not exhaustive, and the three step justification ultimately was laid in the van benderson case? It ultimately points out because we’re talking also about services. I probably should underline that for that case study that we did for Iceland. We look specifically in the context if you want to provide services in Iceland, and in that sense, you need to prove if you want to use justification, as Iceland to having this type of equal pay standard is that the standard needs to needs to have a due legitimate interest to pursue a due legitimate interest. It needs to be equally applicable to persons established within the state, non-discriminatory and proportionate. Now, I wouldn’t want to give you all the details of the article, because I would still hope that maybe at least one person will read the article.

Willem Janssen  20:44

So this episode is one nudge towards  the Nordic Journal of European law Marta.

Marta Andhov  20:48

Absolutely. Absolutely. Totally. Just please come in.

Willem Janssen  20:54

I do not agree with this. I didn’t know this was going to happen. I’m tuning out.  Sorry to interrupt. Let me just briefly and then please, please continue. So basically, the question here is: Are we I think, step one, is this a limitation of free movement to more particularly free movement of services?

Marta Andhov  21:10

Yes.

Willem Janssen  21:11

Then, if we conclude that, yeah. If it is a limitation, we then enter the sphere of justification that we have some codified ones that you mentioned. And then we have the rule of reason as well, because Cassis de Dijon[1] that it relates to? And then, of course, in many cases, you can find this legitimate reason why you should be able to justify it, right? That’s generally not the obstacle in most free movement law cases. It’s mostly the question of proportionality that could be an issue. The question then is like, because maybe sketching an alternative scenario, you are allowed within EU law to have stricter standards for your national, for your own entities, right, the (???) case where you could say, reverse discrimination is allowed, you can have higher standards than what the EU obliges you to uphold, and the fact that a foreign entities can be held to that standard, that’s your own. That is actually one of the aspects of sovereignty, right? We only bind ourselves to EU laws, to the extent that we’ve agreed upon, right, but as a national stage, you can go further same with sustainability standards. But clearly, in your article, you’re not delving into to reverse standards, you’re really looking at the case, which I think is also the most interesting one. Is it say this, I think it was a German tender that you wanted to have moved to Iceland. It’s a shame. You didn’t choose a Dutch, but…

Marta Andhov  22:41

we can go with the Dutch not a problem. No, no, because the reason, the reason why the German for whatever reason came to me is because at some point, we started to think, okay, let’s try to look how that would look in practice, right? So depending what it is that you want to do as a tender in public procurement, it could be a construction contract, the GE coming in and provide services. Somehow services connected with the construction, and that could be long term. But it can also be a fairly short period of time, right, that you can come and provide some services is would it be different if you are coming back regularly, but you always under one year, et cetera, et cetera, there’s all these different elements. Another aspect here that was very problematic, I think, very problematic, also, from the angles specifically of public procurement is exactly the proportionality that you that you mentioned, because when we went through all the others, the due legitimate interest, we assumed that there’s no problem here, because the Equal Pay actually has been part of EU treaties from the very beginning already from Treaty of Rome. So, that is ultimately you know, one of principles, goals and very strong provision within the law. So, we did not thought that this would be problematic here. Equally applicable, non-discriminatory, it’s applicable to everyone that operates on Icelandic market, nevermind if you’re foreign, or if you’re domestic, right. So we thought that again, appeared there’s not really an issue as such, but when we were struggling a little bit was this notion of proportionality, and the notion of proportionality here could be actually analysed on two levels, one is the general EU law, and then another one if you are going to even arrived at the conclusion that yes, then the another proportionality sort of test that you apply is ultimately within public procurement also, right? Up here actually something that I also was considering and thinking about was the Regiopost[2], because Regiopostt, something that some of the commentators to Regiopost case for those of our listeners, this case may sound not particularly familiar was the case about minimum wage and obliging the tenders to pay a minimum wage, and the issue was whether we are not taking the competitive advantage of bidders that ultimately are from other countries,  in those other countries, the minimum wage is of a lower level. But up there what happened was that the court ultimately jumped straightaway to secondary law interpretation, and they did not look at the general principle of proportionality and that has been criticised  on couple occasions. The counter argument to that is that it is already regulated within the secondary legislation that the assumption of that would be that yesterday, you conduct the proportionality test only under the secondary law here, but we struggle with that and I think that I would want to be very clear and open and honest about it, because what the main problem of proportionality with all this is that how the standard is designed is to say did you need to ensure the Equal Pay processes and ensure it within all your company, all your company, right? So, we going again, back to parallelly, compare it with the whole notion of CSR in public procurement. So, we are not saying if we thinking right now, in the in the bracket of public procurement specifically, you need to ensure that whoever is going to work on that public contract that you tendering for will have equal pay, but all your company needs to have this, right? So, this is going outside of procurement contract, outside of procurement process and procurement scenario, and that very clearly, on that level would seem unproportional, potentially. Right? So, then we started to look at it: Well, how we can…what could be interpretation of this law in line that this is actually okay to do. Actually, where the help came was through these updates of the mandatory law on IST85 that came into power from first January 2021. Up there, they acknowledge that there was a challenge, particularly for new companies entering market, right? So if you have a new company, or if you have a change of circumstances, suddenly, let’s say your startup or your SME, and suddenly you tip that scale of 25 plus employees, then the obligation kicks in, but this is quite burdensome. So, how that can be done? The new updated legislation on that the law says that you have up to three years to roll in your processes and obtain that standard? Actually, we used that as leverage to understand the proportionality within this right. We said: Well, if you are a foreign bidder and you and you partake in in tenders, well, you will have those three ultimately scenarios that will allow you to potentially deal with it. So, if you under one year no one can ask you for that standard, if you reoccurring on the Icelandic market, and if you need to calculate and sum all those presents in the Icelandic market, and it is above three years, then in our opinion, you would need to obtain the requirement of obtaining the standard is valid. The third one is that if you are just continuously on the market above the three, that is also….but that that comment that I’m making right now, I just want to make crystal clear that that’s general EU law. We’re not strictly sitting within the tender as such, then that’s a little bit more complicated due to this CSR like requirement, right?

Willem Janssen  29:08

Yeah, and also, I think that the proportionality is the tricky bit, as we already said. The question is: Is this, I think more on a fundamental level, is it necessary to reach the goal to fix the local gender pay gap in Iceland, right? What’s the relevance to include these German applicants…should have said Dutch but…

Marta Andhov  29:31

….all the others all the others that are not Icelandic.

Willem Janssen  29:37

Yeah, this is weird. I find that the Netherlands has this big brother syndrome with with with Germany and the Germans don’t really care about the Netherlands. That’s more our issue than theirs. I think so. But I think that’s one and I think I also find the three years a bit. I mean, it’s, it’s ambiguous, right? Or it’s at least ambivalent. Why three years, then why not? I mean, I get it. It More than one in less than five, I suppose. I feel like it’s kind of, um, it’s the second Dutch proverb that I want to use, but it’s like mopping with the tap open a little bit. But you’re kind of trying to fix or trying to maybe the legislator, but perhaps you found some proof of that maybe the legislator also felt there was a kind of a need for balancing or in terms of proportionality to soften the blow for these foreign bidders.

Marta Andhov  30:27

We didn’t come across anything specifically about the notion of proportionality. We were very surprised when we were conducting this research, and my co-author, he is Icelandic. So, I had the great chance of having someone who could read through a lot of the the local documentation and we conducted some interviews with some people to get the background. What is interesting that all in all the documentation, there is a reference to an EU equal pay law, to ILO conventions and all these different things. But at any point, there’s actually no reference to internal market and all this sort of free movement of providing services, goods, etc, etc. So that was quite interesting for us, but I think that three years have been chosen on the basis of the of the primary experiences, because if you look at the timeline of which companies needed to implement that, first, those were the largest companies, and the experience on how long it takes also, how financially burdensome that is. So, on the basis of doing this equation, that’s how the three years have been, have been chosen. Yeah, but then just if you let me, I would just want to wrap up quickly to point out a couple elements more specifically in public procurement, because like I’m saying, I think that all this article, actually, a lot of it has to do with conducting this primary legal analysis on general EU law, the fundamentals to something that started as a very typical procurement question. But within procurement, what is relevant i think is is couple fold. First, is this element of what I mentioned, how the standard the structure is that they ask you to,  obtain it for whole company. So, it’s broader than procurement, and that in itself is problematic. As a counterweight to that, I think, interesting is to look on the requirements of Article 18.2, that you mentioned earlier on, and we dive into it a little bit more in our previous episode. So this notion of well, if this became a mandatory law of the land, you need to obey by it? And to what extent and what are the consequences of that? And that is this continuous conversation, right? And we don’t really seem to have a very clear boundaries, where this becomes quite problematic and proportionate. And well, this is a standard because this is a mandatory law. You want to conduct business in our land, this is what you need to do. Right? Then, of course, the main issue, what we what we concluded with is that the obtaining of the standard can be can be ultimately used as a proof of equal law compliance, right? So we looking at how you use also labels and standards, right? So you’re saying what needs to be obeyed by what needs to be required. But then, if you have the standard grade, you use it as a means of proof. There are also other possibilities for you as a foreign bidder to prove that you obtained by that, and ultimately also in context of procurement, we said, well, the only way that you can use it, we believe is that you specifically limit it to what the procurement contract is, right? So, you’re saying: Whoever is going to perform that needs to ensure that equal pay within the staff members, within the contract, that element is upheld. Then you can use the Equal Pay standard Icelandic equal pay as a means of proof, but you can use also equivalent once, right. I of course, skip through some elements to it because we don’t have time, and at the same time, I really would hope that some… Hildur!!! I’m actually pointing that to you, I’m hoping that can be particularly interesting for you and some of our other colleagues.

Willem Janssen  34:40

Alright, thank you for the for the wrap up and the final points. Other people couldn’t see that I was signaling you that we needed to go to dessert. So, we’re thinking of including some clinking glasses from the episodes onwards, but if you can imagine just some glasses cleaning, we’re about to go to the desert. So, thank you for the for the introduction to your article. I’m totally on board, and I’m just going to do a total nudge, just grab the August issue of the Nordic Journal of European law and please comment on LinkedIn or Twitter on now Marta research.  So, dessert. I already mentioned it, PhD courses. So, we’ll take a couple more minutes to reflect briefly on that. Our little nerdy academic session as we as we call it amongst ourselves. So, I thought it would be good to just briefly start with our own experiences, and what’s interesting is when you say PhD courses, in a lot of countries whilst doing a PhD, you need to achieve a certain amount of points, credit of being able to… to actually start writing so of course, you’ll do the research on the side, but you need it in order to be able to defend. So, if I reflect on the Netherlands, at most law schools, that doesn’t exist. We do have a cooperation between various universities at Utrecht, in which there’s a joint programme and training programme for doctoral researchers, including methodology sessions, presentations, masterclasses. We kind of structured it a bit, but there’s no specific requirements in the Netherlands, but I’m not sure if that’s different in Denmark.

Marta Andhov  36:21

Um, if I understand you correctly, I think there are some similarities and maybe some differences, we also have a specific amount of ETCS points, that throughout the three years of your PhD contract, you need to accumulate, you don’t have kind of specifics on when exactly, it’s up to you, but there is a specific amount of those points. We have couple courses that are mandatory, that are organised by our law school, things like methodology, academic writing, it’s a combination, you know, between this soft skills and research skills and the research fundamentals. Then a large majority of those points is left to the discretion of the PhD student, or you can decide to go to PhD course, let’s say at Utrecht, or maybe there’s some really interesting conference, let’s say, in Nottingham, where you can submit a paper, you can present a paper and on that basis, there is a specific mathematical calculation, that gives you some points. So, it’s a combination of couple of different things, but it’s for sure perceived as a quite important element of your PhD education.

Willem Janssen  37:31

All right. It’s amazing. We get four years generally to do a PhD, maybe we’re just slow in the Netherlands.

Marta Andhov  37:37

I think that is many countries. I think Sweden has five, is that correct? Yeah, there’s, a variety of that throughout the countries, right?

Willem Janssen  37:49

So, what I always like hearing, particularly from you as well, is…. Every PhD track is different, and everyone has a different piece of baggage in terms of what they need to be able to successfully complete the PhD, right. So, we can’t really share best practices, but perhaps you could share what inspired you or what courses really helped you and why you perhaps chose to do them? I don’t know, I’m looking inspiration Marta.

Marta Andhov  38:17

Sure. This is a bit difficult.  I think today, our colleagues, and particularly our young colleagues that maybe are within procurement area, are in a bit better situation. At the time when I started my PhD that was 2010. I felt at that time, there was not that much specifically within procurement, and it took me a second to realise that there are centres such as Nottingham at that time and I remember going to their PhD conference. For me it was fantastic, because that was the first moment that I really realised – WOW, I’m not alone, there are other people, and when I talk about those things, other people are also getting excited. So, I remembered that one very fondly. Specifically for the perspective of networking, meeting other people sharing experiences, and so on and so forth. I think from perspective of yours as being slightly older, and reflecting back these days, you know,  I find relevant and what I come back still today is all the courses on methodology, though, what I need to also say is that I’ve been present and several of them and the problem is that they are kind of dry. So, it’s a particular skill to how you do the methodology, particularly for the young academics in a way that they really realize how important that is, how relevant that is, and in an interesting way, but I think that the methodologies are quite important. Then when I was doing part of my research stay, part of my PhD in Australia, they had all this training for PhDs and it was nothing to do with research so much, but it was soft skills. It was you know, how you plan your day how you approach your PhD in a project management type of way. The whole free writing and different sort of strategies on how you ride, when you ride, how you think about it, I think processes very much. I thought that that really helped me. Because that kind of gives you help in how do you carry out this three-year process. What about yourself? Do you have any ones that’s particularly stick in your mind as a great experience?

Willem Janssen  40:37

I can really relate to what you said about the feeling like you’re not the only person on the planet doing public procurement research because you generally get nudged into either a competition law group or a broader internal market group if you are fortunate enough to have that. That’s also growing in the Netherlands, right? So, at our Centre, we have about six, seven PhDs walking around now, and they can really group together and not feel…. perhaps they do still feel alone…. but at least they can share their frustrations among each other. So, I did a lot of… during my PhD, I presented a lot. For me, that worked really well. So, when I say like, it’s all very specific; I think once you kind of need to figure out, you need to learn a lot about yourself and how you would need to manage such a big project. So, for me as a deadline worker, I love just having someone that would get angry if I submitted the paper too late, right? So, I would always need that as a, you know, milestone. Those masterclasses for which experts were flown in were very helpful for that. Because it also allows you to kind of…. that was, I think along the way when you can have highs and lows. Like it’s nice to have someone reflect on the stuff you’re doing give you positive feedback, also helpful feedback, but kind of to give you a bit of a champagne moment, right? So, sticking with dessert.

Marta Andhov  42:03

But also, on the other end to the champagne moment, if you know that there is a particular element that is weak about your thesis or your research question, but something that can draw criticism. If you get the question or criticism a couple of times, but you strongly believe that that’s the right thing to do. I had that, you know, with my PhD, I was comparing EU and Australian regulation. And I, on several occasions, got the criticism of hearing: But you are comparing two things that you shouldn’t be comparing. Right? Because it’s sort of one country versus our Union, which is slightly different, and so on, so forth. But because I got it three, four times, by the time that my defense came in my answer, you know, I could throw it off. I rocked it. Absolutely. I definitely knew what my answer to that is to be. So, I think that’s very helpful also.

Willem Janssen  42:54

Yeah, that’s funny; you should say that because I have that as well about article 4.2 of the treaty, about the self organisation and my link to saying like, that’s what’s relevant for procurement as well. I met up with these scholars that were very concerned about what was going on in Hungary and Poland for a good reason, and they said: You’re hollowing out EU law. This link shouldn’t be made.  Even though the Court of Justice had made it, but having had this question. It’s a valid question, for sure, but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t draw the conclusion, right?  So to me, that was also very useful. I find that presenting and getting expert feedback was more useful even though I agree with what you said about methodology courses, is more useful because you actually you’re forced to put your own thinking to paper and to receive even though it’s scary as hell to get feedback on it. So, for sure. Perhaps also looking at the time what I’m taking from this is networking opportunities, present present present, methodology courses, and perhaps I’m forgetting something, but I’d like to just do a short shoutout to your training programme, the SAPIENS training programme that’s coming up after the summer, perhaps you could provide a bit of an introduction to that in case people would be interested.

Marta Andhov  44:12

Sure. So, in three sentences max, let’s try to do that. Absolutely count. SAPIENS is something that I did not yet had a chance to plug-in during our podcast, but if you following our podcast or any social media of mine it is a big Europe Horizon 2020 programme. We have 15 PhDs in sustainable public procurement very exciting. As a part of all that we will be rolling out a different PhD courses and trainings for upcoming three years, and we have a chance to do the first one at the end of September, beginning of October so 28th September till I believe, first or second October and that is on public procurement and sustainability fundamentals for 2 ETCS points and soft skills for early stage researchers, for PhD students for 1 ECTS point. In general, this is addressed to the SAPIENS PhDs but we are also open for external participants. So, in our podcasts, website, all the sorts of things, we will make sure to insert links, and I very warmly would encourage you to part take. Great , great people sharing their experiences and knowledge, and in the same line of great upcoming courses in areas of public procurement…

Willem Janssen  44:19

I am counting.  This is getting way to obvious Marta. We need to work on our subtleness.

Marta Andhov  45:37

I’m going to ping pong back. 

Willem Janssen  45:37

So, also on the 30th of November, we at Utrecht University at the Centre for public procurement, we’ve got a PhD forum, which will hopefully be an annual forum that will organise to support PhDs across the globe. This year’s theme is public procurement for societal challenges, which is very broad in terms of what the content can be, and it’s interdisciplinary. So, the concept is that you get to write a paper, you submit it, you get the chance to network amongst other PhDs, but also the experts who are interdisciplinary will look at your paper, meaning that you’ll get one viewpoint or feedback from a scholar that’s in your field, but also from one that is not in your field, because we think that could be very useful, at least to further your research, and to perhaps get viewpoints that you might not have thought about. Whilst construing your research question, or actually…Well, if you’re already further down the track in the writing process with the paper that you would, would present. So, that’s happening as well, but it you know, it will happen next year as well. Should this be too early. So remember the Sapiens training programme in September, and perhaps also the PhD forum at Utrecht that could be of assistance when we talk about PhD, PhD courses that could help your research. I think this is where we need to wrap it up. Martha, thank you so much for chatting again. I looked at the programme, and it looks, it looks great, but you did use more than three sentences.

Marta Andhov  45:50

I did. I absolutely did.  Thank you soo much. Thank you to our listeners, and we warmly encourage you to join in one of those PhD courses if that’s something of your interest. It weill for sure be good fun.

Willem Janssen  47:33

For sure. This was Bestek, the public procurement podcast.

Bestek  47:40

This was Bestek, the public procurement podcast. Do you want to contribute to today’s discussion? Then share your thoughts on LinkedIn or Twitter. Do you have an idea for a future episode? Write to us at www.bestekpodcast.com

You might also be interested in Marta’s (future) publication on this subject:

• Marta Andhov & Bergþór Bergsson, Equal Pay, EU public procurement law and the free movement of services in the internal market – a case study of mandatory Icelandic ÍST85 standard (forthcoming 2021)

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A61978CJ0120

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62014CC0115

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