PEPPOL (Pan European Public Procurement on-line) is a Large Scale Pilot driven by participating countries and focusing on cross-border provision of ICT services that are already operating at national, regional or local level. These pilot projects aim to develop common specifications that can gain wide acceptance, enabling different national systems to communicate and interact with each other so that citizens and businesses can enjoy the full benefits of the single market.

This pilot project focuses on cross-border activities within the procurement process. It will enable all Member States and other stakeholders, including standardisation bodies, the software industry and SMEs, whether participating in the project or not, to follow the work and influence the definition of specifications as they will be developed.

The European Commission is moving a step closer to making it easier for companies, in particular Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME's), to bid for public sector contracts anywhere in the EU; a crucial step towards achieving the Single European Market.

The Commission is co-financing this project, driven by several European countries that will create the conditions to link existing national electronic public procurement (e-procurement) systems. Simplifying cross-border procurement will generate savings on administrative and transaction costs and will benefit taxpayers who ultimately pay for public purchases. The project will invest more than € 19 million over three years, € 9.8 million of which will come from the European ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP), which is part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP).

For more information about PEPPOL please visit the official site of PEPPOL.