Does anyone have information about history of public procurement in some European countries such as France, Italy or..and some developing countries?

Answer 1

Yes. A useful way to study the history of public procurement is to divide it into national development, European/international harmonization, and modern procurement reform.

In countries such as France and Italy, governments have purchased goods, construction, and services from private suppliers for centuries. Historically, however, procurement rules were primarily national and governments had considerable freedom to favor domestic suppliers.

A major change occurred with European economic integration. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, the European Community developed rules intended to make government contracts more transparent and accessible to suppliers from other member states. The objective was to prevent public purchasing from becoming a disguised barrier to the European common market.

This process accelerated with the development of the European Single Market. European procurement directives increasingly required such principles as:

1. transparency in advertising contracts,
2. equal treatment of suppliers,
3. competitive tendering,
4. objective criteria for selecting winning bids, and
5. procedures allowing suppliers to challenge improper procurement decisions.

Consequently, modern French and Italian procurement law cannot be understood entirely as separate national systems. Both developed within an increasingly important framework of European Union procurement law. EU reforms in 2004 and again in 2014 represented important stages in this process.

Italy is also an interesting case because procurement reform has been closely connected with efforts to simplify a fragmented legal system, improve administrative capacity, increase competition, and combat corruption.

For developing countries, the historical path has often been different. Many inherited procurement practices from colonial administrations or developed separate national purchasing systems after independence. From the 1980s and especially the 1990s onward, procurement reform became an important part of economic and governmental reform.

Several international institutions have been particularly influential. The World Bank and other development banks established procurement requirements for projects they financed. The UNCITRAL Model Law on Procurement of Goods, Construction and Services (1994) provided countries with a model for creating modern procurement legislation. It was replaced by an updated UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement in 2011.

International trade agreements were another major influence. The GATT Agreement on Government Procurement entered into force in 1981, and the WTO Government Procurement Agreement subsequently expanded the international framework for opening government purchasing to foreign competition.

Therefore, if you are researching this subject, I would organize it approximately as:

traditional national procurement → competitive tendering reforms → international/EU harmonization → transparency and anti-corruption reforms → electronic and strategic procurement.

For reliable research sources, I would start with the European Commission and European Parliament for France and Italy, and with UNCITRAL, the World Bank, OECD, and WTO for comparative and developing-country histories. These sources also provide references that can lead you to country-specific legislation and historical studies.