Meantime the European Commission is studying how to increase co-operation between European Community countries’ national administrations to ensure that the single market runs smoothly, and one means would be a Community-wide network in the public procurement field to promote more open and effective competition at the Community level. The Commission considers that it is timely to review the system of administrative co-operation in the internal market field given the very large volume of Community legislation, according to a Commission communication made available to Reuters. The communication will be presented to the September 27 Internal Market Council, and the idea of the network is developed in a study commissioned by the Commission, which proposes setting up an information system called SIMAP, for Information System on Public Procurement, to give companies and supervising authorities timely knowledge of any national tender and related information. SIMAP would provide access to the Tenders Electronic Daily database, which contains all tenders published in the official journal supplement. France, the Netherlands and others have said that any further administrative co-operation between themselves and the Commission would simply add to the bureaucracy.
