Sérvulo Correia collaborates with Law Faculty of Bissau on post-grad course in Contract Law

NEWS AND EVENTS 22 Nov 2011

From November 7 to 11, Prof. Sérvulo Correia lectured the module on public contracts, as part of the post-graduation course in Contract Law at the Law Faculty of Bissau.

Guinea-Bissau is in a transition period in terms of procedural and substantive public contracts legislation as a result of a process of harmonisation of legislation amongst the member states of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA - Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine), brought about by two directives issued by this regional organisation. The Framework Law on Public Procurement is already in force (Law n.19/2010, of June 30), and it will cover a whole range of bills currently being proposed as laws or as draft laws (Public Contracts Code, Decree on the Central Unity of Public Procurement, Decree on the Establishment of the Public Procurement Regulation Authority, Decree on the Organisation and Working Methods of the Public Procurement Directorate-General).

Prof. Sérvulo Correia led the lectures from the perspective of preparing for the new regime that is taking shape the 40 or so jurists who were present. He also covered the framework matrix presented by the Constitution of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, as well as the abovementioned Directives n.04/2005/CM/UEMOA and n.05/2005/CM/UEMOA, which are substantially different from the well-known EU directives on public procurement.

Moreover, it was important to consider another three bills which are under consideration:  the Draft Law for the Administrative Procedures Code, the Draft Law for the Contentious Procedures Code, and the Bill for the Organic Law on the Administrative Court. The course also served to identify points on which this large-scale harmonisation needs further analysis, raising the need to make certain choices of legislative policy.

The materials used by Prof. Sérvulo Correia during his lectures can be found here (in Portuguese).