The procurement of goods and services by public-sector contracting agencies is of great importance both for the government and for the business community. The government’s task is to use public resources as efficiently and economically as possible and to ensure fair and regulated competition.

In the European Union (EU), public contract awarding is key to the success of the single economic area. In order to ensure a largely unrestricted competition in the field of crossborder procurement, awarding authorities also have to meet certain requirements imposed by the EU in awarding contracts where the contract value exceeds certain thresholds. To this end, the EU Member States have to transpose EU
procurement law into their national law and apply it. This has already happened both in the Czech Republic and in Germany. For contracts worth less than the EU thresholds, regulating public contract awarding procedures remains a matter for the individual countries.
Moreover, the contract award procedure is, as a rule, vulnerable to corruption. In view of the generally high damage potential, awarding authorities are obliged to take reasonable action to fight and to rule out corruption and abusive favouritism in their contract award procedures (corruption prevention).