Within this article we made a study on centralized public procurement in countries in the European Union, the USA and Romania. We analyse the disadvantages and advantages of the centralized procurement of products or services and the situations in which the establishment of central procurement agencies and the achievement of centralized procurement are justified.It also outlines the main features and achievements of the most important central procurement agencies in the European Union and of the central procurement agency in the United States of America. The article also contains the stage of implementation of centralized public procurement in Romania.

The spread of the pandemic generated by the emergence of the new COVID-19 coronavirus quickly became a reality that we cannot ignore and that has caused a series of rapid changes in our personal and professional life, while being a challenge from a managerial point of view. Emergency public procurement has been one of the measures taken by all governments affected by the pandemic to support health systems and limit the spread of the virus. The article analyzes the literature on public procurement in emergency situations and the main features of emergency public procurement management functions. It also describes how public procurement procedures have been simplified in Romania during the state of emergency, the benefits achieved and the problems encountered in conducting procurement procedures to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic

Green public procurement is defined by the European Commission (2016b) as: "a process whereby public authorities seek to procure goods, services and works with a reduced environmental impact throughout their life cycle when compared to goods, services and works with the same primary function that would otherwise be procured ". Public procurement is increasingly perceived as a means of improving sustainability. The United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 explicitly refers to the need of promoting sustainable procurement as a goal of sustainable development (UN, 2015). Even if green public procurement has higher purchase prices, green products can help reduce costs. The European Commission (2016a) has considered green procurement as a way to save money, when costs are analysed from the life-cycle perspective, for

Public procurement represents the most important link between the public administration and the economy of a state, through which governments buy annually very high value products, works or services. Knowing the characteristics of the environment, critical success factors and stakeholders is of great importance because these are the three main elements that contribute to the award of public procurement contracts and the efficient spending of budgetary funds. The research presents an analysis of the specialized literature, the main statistical data from the official public procurement reports and identifies the most important characteristics of the environment in which public procurement takes place in Romania, the stakeholders and the critical success factors in this field.

Even though the relevance of corruption is very high in all fields of activity, the specialized literature in the field of public procurement has paid very little or even no attention to this crucial phenomenon. The field of public procurement presents a high risk of corruption, the evidence being the large number of high-level corruption cases in several Member States of the European Union. The study presents the specialized literature related to corruption in public procurement in the European Union and United States of America, analyzes the level of corruption in public procurement in Romania, the causes that generate corruption and the main measures to combat it. The article also presents the results of a survey realized among the purchasers from Romania which addresses the main elements of corruption in the field of public procurement. The survey analyzes issues related to corruption in public procurement in Romania, such as: level of corruption, control over corruption, frequency of occurrence of corruption acts, procurement procedures most prone to corruption, characteristics of the procurement procedures that favors the occurrence of corruption, most widespread way of manifesting corruption, most important consequence of corruption, percentage of increasing contract costs due to corruption, most effective anti-corruption measure.