This article outlines a new framework for how SMEs and contracting authorities can take steps to increase cross-border procurement in the European Union. It offers new suggestions for improving SMEs chances of winning public contracts offered outside their immediate national border, and suggestions for reform in tender evaluation practices that could help SMEs overcome their aversion to "home bias" in public procurement. Despite longstanding legal harmonisation of EU public procurement rules and laws for over 30 years, there have been no significant improvements in the levels of cross-border public procurement activity, which remains stubbornly low. Within the EU there is a disconnection between globalisation trends and trends in cross-border public procurement within the EU. The process of creating common rules for the conduct of public tendering across the EU has failed to address the serious obstacles to cross-border procurement by a range of barriers, including Non-Tariff Barriers (NTB); the lack of obligation to require advertisement of non-threshold contracts on the EU's own TED 2 tender portal; and contracting authorities' 3 behaviour for preferring national suppliers. 4 Although the statistical information explored within this article strongly suggests that current EU policies on transparency, competition, and openness are proving to be largely ineffective at transnational procurement level, our proposed action-based framework developed out of an EU-funded cross-border procurement research project, proposes a new way forward to address the limitations of the current EU Directives. 5 Our proposed actionbased framework identifies what actions need to be implemented in order to achieve the outcomes envisaged by 5 current European Commission recommendations for change. 6 This, combined with the use of new intuitive and emerging technologies we suggest, could be a significant driving force for change in this area. Embracing new technologies in the fashion proposed by our framework, contract opportunities that seemed out of reach geographically,

À travers quelques réflexions sur le rôle du monarque au sein du système de distinctions honorifiques britannique, dont l’origine remonte à la conquête normande de 1066, sont décrites la place que ce système occupe dans la vie britannique et la manière dont il continue de lier la Reine à ses sujets. Y sont également analysées les critiques qui lui sont adressées, par ailleurs souvent ignorées par le gouvernement, afin de montrer en quoi une meilleure gouvernance et une plus grande transparence sont nécessaires pour préserver, dans un Royaume-Uni multiracial, la confiance en cette institution.

Unlike other EU Member States, existing studies on public procurement challenges in UK local government lack empirical analysis. The Law Commission has identified this as an area for review. Little is known about the frequency and distribution of such challenges within the UK. Consequently, observations made on the number of procurement disputes actually leading to judicial review applications are speculative. This article, for the first time, generates new empirical data on the subject and makes reform recommendations. Using data elicited from nearly 400 local government bodies, the national and regional frequency and distribution of such challenges is illuminated for the first time. Glaring inability by Local Government bodies to retain and retrieve data pertaining to Local Government procurement was revealed by the study; the frequency and distribution of challenges was seen to vary widely across different UK regions; the number of challenges has risen significantly following 2009 law and policy reforms (rather than reduce); and the insights generated in the article will support the Law Commission’s call for further study of internal administrative review systems within public bodies so the connection between administrative justice and those seeking natural justice in procurement disputes is better understood. judicial review, local government, public procurement, freedom of information, policy reform.

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