To achieve the Lisbon objectives, it is highly recommended to use ICT effectively for enabling interoperability in public procurement. A major objective of the European Commission is to enable European-wide e-Procurement across borders by creating common principles and technical solutions that are applied within all Member States.

Current e-Procurement infrastructures are inappropriate to reach this ambitious aim since these are characterized by a high market fragmentation. Among other building blocks the PEPPOL consortium develops a Virtual Company Dossier (VCD), which focuses on an interoperable solution containing the documents required from economic operators to evidence their qualification with regard to qualitative selection and non-exclusion in public tenders. When a contracting authority publishes a contract notice, it shall include qualitative selection and non-exclusion criteria. The economic operators have to submit evidence and proof in respect of these criteria. Hence, during the preparation of the tender an economic operator needs to collect the respective evidences (i.e. attestations and certificates) from a number of issuing bodies (e.g. public registries, banks etc.) to prove conformance with the given selection and exclusion criteria. 

At present, economic operators have difficulties to identify and collect suitable qualifications they need to submit to contracting authorities cross border. Also contracting authorities face problems in verifying submitted evidence in cross border procedures. There exist no commonly used principle and technical solution to monitor the exchange of evidence across border in consistent and transparent manner. The VCD therefore will reduce the burden of proof for the economic operator while supporting contracting authorities’ in proving suitability of economic operators.