Keywords
Summary

Keywords

Approximation of laws — Review procedures relating to the award of public supply and public works contracts — Directive 89/665 — Application by a tenderer for review of a contracting authority's decision excluding it from a tendering procedure — Plea alleging incompatibility with Community law of a notice of invitation to tender — Admissible notwithstanding the expiry of the period prescribed for bringing proceedings for review of that notice — Condition — Conduct of the contracting authority aimed at depriving the tenderer of the rights conferred by the Community legal order — (Council Directive 89/665)

Summary

Directive 89/665 on the coordination of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions relating to the application of review procedures to the award of public supply and public works contracts, as amended by Directive 92/50 relating to the coordination of procedures for the award of public service contracts, must be interpreted as imposing on the competent national courts, where it is established that, by its conduct, a contracting authority has rendered impossible or excessively difficult the exercise of the rights conferred by the Community legal order on a national of the Union who has been harmed by a decision of that contracting authority to exclude him from a tendering procedure, an obligation to allow as admissible pleas in law alleging that the notice of invitation to tender is incompatible with Community law, which are put forward in support of an application for review of that decision, by availing itself, where appropriate, of the possibility afforded by national law of disapplying national rules on limitation periods, under which, when the period prescribed for bringing proceedings for review of the notice of invitation to tender has expired, it is no longer possible to plead such incompatibility.

see para. 66, operative part