91997E2069

WRITTEN QUESTION E-2069/97 by Jaak Vandemeulebroucke (ARE) to the Commission (19 June 1997)

Subject: Calls for tenders by the European Union

In its reply to my parliamentary question E-0631/97 ((OJ C 373, 9.12.1997, p. 22. )), the Commission evades the question at issue. In view of the importance of avoiding conflicts of interests, I believe that, whenever assessing tenders, the Commission should know which natural persons are behind a business.

With this in mind, I would find it unacceptable that a contract should be awarded to a business run by an official of the body awarding the contract.

I would have liked to have heard from the Commission how it checks on this and how it accordingly seeks to ensure that conflicts of interests cannot occur.

Answer given by Mr Monti on behalf of the Commission (9 September 1997)

The Commission understood question E-631/97 of the Honourable Member as referring to distortions of competition in public tender procedures as a result of the fact that either different companies present themselves as candidates in one public tender procedure, several of these companies being owned by the same (legal or

natural) persons, or one candidate has a competitive advantage in a tender procedure as a result of the fact that it has executed a previous contract for the same contracting authority, which had as its object the preparation or advising of this contracting authority for the tender procedure in question. The answer to question E-631/97 related therefore to these two situations.

On the basis of the Honourable Member's current question the Commission now understands that the issue at stake covers situations which might distort competition in cases where one of the candidates in the tender procedure is (partly) owned by an employee of the contracting authority. The Commission agrees that such a situation might create conflict of interests. Indeed, it might even result in a breach of the principle of equal treatment of candidates, according to the Court of justice one of the basic principles of the Community's public procurement law.

The directives on public procurement do not themselves provide for a mechanism for checking the existence of these situations, nor can the Commission possibly check the validity of every single award procedure as to this point. However, if the Commission has indications that a conflict of interests has occurred, it intervenes. As an example the Commission refers to a recent case where formal infringement proceedings on the basis of Article 169 of the EC Treaty were started against a Member State because one of the shareholders of the bidder was a member of the group commissioned by the contracting authority to carry out the evaluation of the tenders.