Many government entities across Europe deliver services through municipal or public-owned companies. Such entities are less common in the UK, although the issue is increasingly on the agenda, with a strong preference expressed in the UK government’s current ICT and services delivery policy for the use of “mutuals” and procurement via shared services.

Against this background, the European Court of Justice has clarified previous rulings on the conditions that apply to the procurement of services on an “in-house” basis by a public authority, especially where the public authority has only a minority shareholding in the selected in-house publicly-owned service provider.