Abstract

Most of the public procurement procedures offered in the Polish Public Procurement Law involve an aspect of negotiations. However, despite this, and despite its undoubted advantages, negotiations are very rarely used by Polish contracting authorities, who generally opt for a simple bidding procedure. It seems, however, that the shortcomings of the legal regulations are not responsible for this, but rather the fears of contracting staff, which may be due to a lack of ability or experience in conducting negotiations. Hopes for improvements in the situation may come from the second variant of the basic mode, which provides for optional negotiations with a clearly defined scope. These also provide the possibility to narrow down the circle of contractors participating in the negotiations. Data from the Public Procurement Bulletin show that contracting authorities are relatively willing to use this new solution. Perhaps in the future, the practice of negotiating with contractors will become so established that contracting authorities will be less apprehensive about using other negotiating procedures.