e-CERTIS is a free, on-line source of information to help companies and contracting authorities to cope with the different forms of documentary evidence required for cross-border tenders for public contracts in the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

. The EU seeks through its

procurement Procurement is the method of discovering and agreeing to terms and purchasing goods, services, or other works from an external source, often with the use of a tendering or competitive bidding process. When a government agency buys goods or serv ...

regulations to promote the free movement of goods and

services Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a p ...

across internal borders and recognizes that the variety of certification systems and evidence requirements across the 27 Member States, one Candidate Country (

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

) and the three

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade As ...

(EEA) countries (

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

Liechtenstein Liechtenstein (), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (german: link=no, Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarch ...

and

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

) can create unnecessary complication and uncertainty, reducing the attractiveness to businesses of bidding for contracts to supply goods and services to public authorities in a different member state. e-CERTIS therefore exists to help businesses, especially

small and medium-sized enterprises Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel and revenue numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by international organizations such as the World Bank ...

, to understand what information is being requested during a procurement exercise. Similarly, e-CERTIS helps public bodies (contracting authorities) to recognise and process official documents issued in another Member State (such as company registration documents or operating licenses) when they receive them in the context of a public procurement procedure. e-CERTIS was launched at the end of 2010. Maintenance of the system was initially voluntary on the part of EU member states, but the 2014 Directive on Public Procurement mandated maintenance and use of the system by 18 October 2018 at the latest, 30 months after the deadline for transposition of most elements of the directive. Whilst use of the system to check documents is mandatory, the fact that e-Certis suggests that a document from country A is comparable to another document from country B will not be treated as creating a legally binding obligation to accept the document.European Commission
e-Certis
updated 9 March 2017, accessed 30 June 2018

References

{{Reflist European Union Government Procurement in the European Union