In our experience, gold plating is mainly a result of lack of competition. What we see (coming from a small member state) is that even when a procurement procedure is fully compliant with the law, it may still allow for gold plating, as competition is limited by language knowledge and the tenderers are allowed to request the offers (and all the accompanying documentation) to be written in a specific language. Imagine, how many competitors are able even to translate the documentation, hence to prepare the offer in a small EU language, like slovene (or latvian, or portoguese), in 45 days available to present the offer? The same goes on the contrary, competitors from small countries are unable to read the tender documentation, and obviously not able to present an offer, in other languages.
The described problem, together with the fact that in specific industries in the member states, there are very few specialists (that usually work for those, who offer the solutions), and it's practically impossible for them not to be involved in some way in the tender spec preparation, leads us to gold plating.
Please request, at list for ESIF, that the tender documentation is done also in english, and that offers in english must be accepted.
Goran
P.S. In some cases, evidence of gold plating can be discovered, if proper calculus for sustainability is requested. As ESIF finances infrastructure, a request for sustainability calculation, proving self sustainability of a project in the operational phase over a long (at list 20year) period, including the needed reinvestments (for bigger maintenance works). For sustainability reasons, real costs of reinvestment will be used (as they have to be financed by the project's income), and they can be directly compared with the initial (gold plated) cost.
