BESTEK - The Public Procurement Podcast

BESTEK - The Public Procurement Podcast treats EU procurement law the way a dinner host treats a menu. Willem Janssen and Marta Anhov, the hosts named on the feed, frame each episode as a meal. The spoken intro promises procurement law, their love of food and academic life, then ends with an offer to dish up public procurement law. What arrives is a 'main' and a 'dessert'. The main is the law, and it gets serious treatment. On exclusion grounds, the talk goes back to Article 57 of Directive 2014/24/EU and treats exclusion as a test of whether a contractor is reliable. It separates contractors an authority must not work with from those it may choose to avoid, then moves to newer grounds around green claims, environmental crimes and deforestation. On sustainability clauses, a guest looks at who can enforce them once a contract is signed. The answer points to firms that stayed out of the tender, or bid and lost, because of what compliance would cost. Those firms may seek termination or ask for the contract themselves. The Irado case is framed as a clash between what EU law dictates and what member states consider necessary for public services such as waste management. The activities criterion is where that clash plays out. Directive reform draws a blunt observation: roughly half a century of legislation, and still no internal market for public contracts, with cross-border awards remaining rare. Circularity brings in right to repair, producer liability and circular supply chains. Technology gets a practical hearing as well. With public servants stretched thin, the hosts consider AI that flags contract stages, monitors supplier performance and checks that reported invoicing matches sustainability criteria. As one of them puts it, 'cement will be cement', so the paperwork has to show whether the material is sustainable. Then comes dessert. The lighter half leaves doctrine for teaching and academic life: fostering a classroom community, advice for first-year PhD students, alternative ways of examining, and books or articles the two have enjoyed. Law clinics come up as well. The contrast between the two halves is the point. One host teases the other for opening an episode too seriously. A wrap-up on classroom community ends with the hope that any students who listen will hear that the hosts care. Episodes close by asking for comments on LinkedIn or Twitter and for episode ideas sent through the show's website.