The study is mainly to reflect on how the two members of the European Union, Sweden and Finland has chosen to implement the directive 2014/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of the European Union. To limit the study the focus has been to investigate the width of ‘conflict of interest’ as well as the width of ‘contracting authorities’.

The conflict of interest may appear in all phases within the purchasing process with a risk for unjust advantages for the wanted supplier or the opposite, where a supplier is excluded by purpose.

The actual procurement process is presented in the study in a wider context where the procurement document, the publication of the document as well as the establishing of the winning tender is defined as the second phase. The total process of purchasing begins with a first phase, the analysis of the actual need, market orientation and an evaluating of the previous contract. The third phase, contract management, is very critical as the risk of becoming caught altering the contracts during the term is low. Therefore, is not only the conflict of interest connected to the prior involvement of candidates or tenderers that need to be addressed.

The regulation of the two national procurement laws does not contain the wider sense of conflict of interest. Instead, one Finnish inferior law, regulating administration and conflict of interest there in, appears to be the most comprehensive legislation to include all organizations that the procurement law applies to.

The Swedish regulation as oppose to the Finnish spread out on a general administrative law and a law applied to the municipal organizations. However, this is not including all the organizations that must process their procurations according to law. The legislator refers to the constitutional principle, the principle of equality, and a mandate for the procurement authority to support all procurement organizations that are obliged to implement procurement under public procurement laws.

Above is a simplified description of how the procurement directive has been implemented in Sweden and Finland. What has been noted is that is does not appear to be any penalties for those who shows a behavior indicating that there is a conflict of interest in any of the steps of the purchasing process. On the other hand, it is the contracting organization that may face penalties such as a waste of resources when a procurement is reviewed and fails, which means further time spent on yet another process of procurement. A contracting organization that does not manage its contracts according to the stated demands in the procurement might make such incorrect purchases or concessions that could lead to considerable sanctions.