European Commission failed to ensure fairness in contract tendering process, says watchdog

The Commission paid the compensation to the unknown Brussels-based company after an investigation by an EU watchdog revealed that it had failed to provide the company with the same information that was available to the "successful tenderer" for the contract during the bidding process.

The European Ombudsman, which is responsible for investigating complaints and maladministration by EU bodies and institutions, suggested the Commission pay compensation to cover the costs of the Belgian company in bidding for its contract as a "friendly solution" to the dispute.

The company had asked for its bid for the Commission's contract, which was for the organisation of seminars on green public procurement, to be "reassessed" or for "appropriate compensation" to be awarded to it after deeming that the reasons the Commission had given for not accepting its bid were "not convincing," the Ombudsman said.

The Commission had decided to award its contract to another company even though the Belgian firm had bid to do the work on cheaper terms. The Commission said, though, that the company's bid "did not represent the best value for money" and that it felt the firm had under budgeted what it what cost to complete the work, according to the Ombudsman.

Whilst the eventual winner of the contract had identified where the seminars would take place and proposed a budget that was "compatible" with the organisation of those events, the Belgian company's budget had "raised doubts as to whether it had understood" what the Commission was asking to be undertaken "at all," according to the Ombudsman's decision summary.

However, an investigation by the watchdog uncovered that the successful bidder had been privy to information about where the seminars were due to take place, whilst that information had not been shared with the Belgian firm. The Commission had therefore failed to ensure that the tendering process had been fairly handled, the Ombudsman said.

"The Ombudsman's inquiry revealed that, in accordance with the applicable rules, the formal decision regarding the Member States where the seminars would take place had to be made by the Commission at a later stage," the Ombudsman said. "However, in practice, those Member States were already known both to the Commission and to the successful tenderer, but not to the [Belgian firm]."

"In light of the fact that the Commission did not inform the [Belgian firm] about where the seminars would take place, the Ombudsman found that the Commission failed to ensure equal treatment of tenderers and that this undermined the [Belgian firm's] chances of succeeding in the tender process. He therefore proposed a friendly solution to the Commission to the effect that it should compensate the [Belgian firm] for the expenses it incurred in order to participate in the tender process. As a result, the Commission paid the complainant over €10 000. The case was thus settled," it added.