Wednesday, February 27, 2007, the Romanian Government approved the Decision regarding the modification and completion of the Norms of application concerning the electronic attribution of public procurement contracts of the Government's Emergency Ordinance no 34/2006 regarding the attribution of public procurement contracts, of contracts for concession of public works and of contracts for service concession, approved by the Government decision no 1660/2006.

The adoption of this Decision represents an important step for the achievement of the engagement Romania took through the Manchester Declaration on November, 24, 2005. By signing this declaration, the ministers responsible for the e-government policies of the EU Member States and candidate countries established as an objective that by 2010 at least 50% of the total number of public procurements will be concluded electronically.

Following the adoption of this legislative act, starting with 2008, contracting authorities have the obligation to utilize electronic means for implement award procedures for achievement directly procurements for at least 20% by the entire effectively public procurement for the year respectively.

The Manchester Declaration

The Manchester Declaration focuses on delivering clear social and economic benefits to citizens, businesses and governments, through four key challenges to governments:

• No citizen left behind: To build IT innovatively into policy design, public service delivery, and information provision to actively include the disadvantaged.
• Effective and efficient government: To use IT to improve the consumer’s experience of public services; reduce costs – especially to business – of dealing with government; improve administrative efficiency; and improve the transparency of government.
• High impact European services: To identify and implement services that most benefit the freedom of movement of labour, services, goods and capital. eg eProcurement has been identified for immediate action because of known benefits for markets, suppliers, and value for money in public purchasing.
• Simple and secure access to online public services: To work together at EU level to address the issues of complexity, security and public confidence around electronic authentication to access public services.

This Declaration proposes Member States integrate these objectives into their national strategies for eGovernment, and set out in 2006 the activities they propose in order to meet these goals.