Danish response to the public consultation on demand-side policies to
spur European industrial innovations in a global market
Denmark welcomes the efforts of the Commission in using demand-sidepolicies to spur innovation in the European industries. In this regard, it isof particular importance to promote progress and common solutions inthe context of the revision of the EU public procurement rules as simplerrules would support growth and innovation.More specifically, increased use of functional requirements will consti-tute a major contribution to the promotion of demand for innovativeEuropean products and services. Use of functional requirement opens upthe possibility of expanding a simple price competition to becoming acompetition on content, quality and form.One of the most significant advantages of using functional requirementsis that these emphasize results and the needs of the contracting authorityinstead of focusing on activities and procedural requirements. This en-sures the public sector’s access to state of the art know-how and leadingstandards. Through functional requirements private enterprises can intro-duce new and more effective solutions to the needs of the contractingauthorities, thereby enhancing the competition for public contracts.Investments in innovation and new solutions can strengthen the supplier’scompetitive position on the market and increase the supplier’s ownershipof the assignment, which can lead to better cooperation between supplierand contracting authority.The biggest challenges for contracting authorities and suppliers alikewhen using functional requirements is partly that they yet have limitedknowledge and experience in using these, and partly that there is still aneed for adaptation of the contracting authority to functional require-ments and contracts. The contracting authorities have limited knowledgeof specification of requirements and of follow-up of functional require-ments.The possible result of this limited knowledge of functional requirementsis that many tenders using functional requirements do not in practice en-sure the proper correlation between the focus on results, how to solve theassignment with novel ideas and the attainment of the greatest possibleincentives for effective solution of the assignment.The full potential of using functional requirements is therefore not real-ized and there is a need for knowledge sharing and development of toolswhich can support the contracting authorities in the use and understand-ing of functional requirements.