Public Procurement Regulation: Fostering Market Access and Simultaneously Preventing Corruption: A Swiss Perspective

Much like in German legal thinking, the initial and predominant position in Switzerland during the late nineties of the last century was that public procurement is only about market access, internal market, competition and money. Therefore, the WTO Government Procurement Agreement 1994 was interpreted accordingly by the majority of scholars. The revised GPA 2012 explicitly addresses sustainability, good governance and corruption, topics which are form the point of view of classical trade-officials "unrelated to the benefits of trade". The WTO nowadays more or less officially shares the view of Transparency International, according to which few government activies create greater temptations or offer more opportunities for corruption than public sector procurement. That is why the aims and purposes of public procurement reegulations have been or are about to be redefined. (British Journal of White Collar Crime, III/1 (2018), p. 14 ss.