The evaluation of PPP projects: is it only a matter of Value for Money?

The paper aims at providing a comprehensive juridical account of the procedure of ex ante evaluation of public-private partnership projects, in light of the public interest. After affirming the necessity to part from descriptive and normative accounts of the public interest, also on the basis of the reasoning provided by the Italian administrative law literature on the issue, it assumes a flexible notion of the concept that allows contributions from private actors. Subsequently, it criticises the common methods of PPP evaluations that are limited to an assessment of maximisation of the Value for Money and proposes to consider the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of a PPP as parameters of a more structured evaluation, which consists in the process of construction of the public interest.