Administrative Arbitration in Public Procurement in Portugal: State-of-the-Art

In recent years Portugal has developed diferent regimes of public arbitration, especially in administrative law. The option to find an alternative to the courts, namely to solve con-flits in public procurement is an ongoing project and naturaly a solution with advantages and disavantages. This study deals with some aspects of the general theory of administrative arbitration: not only the traditional matters, but also the recent changes to the Portuguese Code of Procedure in Administrative Courts (CPTA), as well as other aspects that we believe should deserve greater attention from the Authors. In addition, the rules on arbitration set out in the Portuguese Public Procurement Code are addressed. Finally, some notes are included on urgent administrative arbitration, in particular on the regime of ‘pre-contractual arbitration litigation’ resulting from the recent amendments to the CPTA.