Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 29th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG5: Public Finance and Public Financial Mngmt. (Physical) Author(s) Denisa Terhes Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca Romania Title Competition vs. Urgency in Times of Covid-19: The Impact on Public Procurement File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Denisa Terhes Abstract The year 2020 has been a real international challenge, as with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic all countries around the world have made efforts to provide specific medical services, adequate medical equipment, , and medical products to prevent the spread of Covid-19 virus. Due to the high demand for products and services of the same kind in a short time, the state authorities had to purchase these products in the fastest way possible, through public procurement, taking into account the observance of the fundamental principles of public procurement, as well as its general purpose, namely best value for money. This urgency in procurement gives us the opportunity to analyze the principle of free and unrestricted competition, as a principle believed to be highly violated due to the measures adopted by the authorities in order to create a more flexible and fast public procurement process. Thus, this article aims to (1) present the principle of free competition through the procurement legislation during the state of emergency, show (2) if competition in public procurement was affected by the urgency in times of Covid-19, so then to (3) set the level of competition in Romania before and after Covid-19, by conducting a study on the annual public procurement reports. Finally, we concluded that the principle of competition was indeed highly violated during Covid-19 pandemic, due to the urgency in public procurement process (5).
