[Translate to English:]

Today we organized a very interesting meeting with our colleagues from the OECD, but especially with a representative of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic, specifically with the director of department of the public procurement, Mr. Ondrej Kuruc.

We talked about the state of public procurement in the field of healthcare, but also about how they try to procure more sensibly and responsibly. Since 2016, the Ministry of Health has been trying to procure with the application of other award criteria than the lowest price. They also create model competitions and documents for hospitals that fall under their care, which hospitals can be inspired by when announcing their own public procurement. As Mr. Kuruc himself said, he sees the main shortcoming with the application of MEAT criteria in Slovakia in the lack of cooperation between departments of public procurement and analysts, who could help in many ways to determine the value of the given qualitative sub-criteria.

We are very much looking forward to similar stimulating meetings, which take us further and explain to us the current situation of using the MEAT criteria, and again we would like to thank very much to all involved and we look forward to similar meetings in the future.