EU takes Germany to court over rescue transport services
The European Commission initiated legal action against Germany. The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg will investigate whether certain regional and local authorities awarded contracts for rescue transport services without applying transparent contract award procedures.
The conflict has been simmering since 2006 when emergency medical service providers from outside Germany complained about the intransparent award procedures.
The European Commission claims that authorities in certain German federal states - Saxony-Anhalt, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony and Lower Saxony – violated European public procurement law by awarding rescue service contracts “for several hundred millions of euros” in this “important market” without the required public tender.
The German authorities argued that rescue transport services are not subject to EU law since they are part of the public tasks of the states and involve the exercise of official authority. However, according to the ECJ case-law rescue services are not connected with such exercise of official authority and Member States are obliged to ensure that rescue transport services are awarded in compliance with EU rules on public procurement.
Judgement is expected in 2009.
Picture: RainerSturm/pixelio
This article was published on 07/18/2008
Search
Service
Company News
Meet us at MEDICA! Hall 7 Stand 15
The European Hospital team will be happy to hear about your research, products, R&D or trials and launches, hospital management issues, or any other aspects of your work, so that we can discuss your editorial ideas. We will also be pleased to help with any PR or advertising queries.
Accu-Chek® Combo – put effective diabetes management into action
At the annual congress of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) this year in Rome, Roche Diabetes Care introduced Accu-Chek Combo – the insulin pump system that combines an insulin pump with an intelligent glucose monitoring system, a bolus calculator, and an integrated pump remote-control.
Technical infrastructure for EU funded R-bay project
Carestream Health is a major technical infrastructure provider to the EU-funded R-Bay validation project, which aims to address the uneven spread of radiologists across member states. CARESTREAM Radiology and Information Management Solutions are driving the initial test platform for the project by facilitating remote reporting of images from hospitals in Denmark, Finland and Czech Republic by clinical providers in Estonia, Lithuania and the Netherlands.