Public-private partnership as a solution for competition restrictions for local governments in Finland

This article aims to find out how Finnish legislation allows usage of PPPs by local governments. This study was conducted by analysing the main features of PPPs from literature as well as analysing EU and national legislation. The main findings of the study were that the most significant legislation is EU public procurement legislation, which sets a framework on how the public can acquire the skills and problem-solving from the private sector. The procurement method called ‘the competitive dialogue’ has proven to be effective in PPPs. As there are many different forms of PPPs, it is possible that other legislation can create issues with PPPs as well, mainly EU State aid regulation, national, local government regulation, and national competition regulation. As a main result, it can be stated that regulation does not prevent or even hinder the usage of PPPs as long as legal requirements are taken account and markets are not unnecessarily disturbed.