Action brought on 11 August 2008 — Bull and Others v Commission

(Case T-333/08)

(2008/C 285/79)

Language of the case: French

Parties

Applicants: Bull SAS (Les Clayes-sous-Bois, France), Unisys Belgium SA (Brussels, Belgium) and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) SA (Capellen, Luxembourg) (represented by: B. Lombaert and M. van der Woude, lawyers)

Defendant: Commission of the European Communities

Form of order sought

Pleas in law and main arguments

The applicants challenge the Commission's decision to reject their tender submitted in connection with the call for tenders procedure concerning contract ‘DIGIT/R2/PO/2007/024 — Managed services provision’ (OJ 2007 S 159 — 197776) and the decision not to award the contract in the absence of satisfactory tenders and to open the negotiated procedure.

In support of their application, the applicants claim, first of all, that the contested decision was not taken in compliance with the rules for the conferral of powers within the Commission, since the decision was taken by an ‘Acting Head of Unit’. The applicants take the view that it was not established that the author of the measure was in fact entitled to adopt such a decision in the Commission's name.

Secondly, the applicants submit that the Commission infringed its obligation to state reasons by not setting out, in its decision, the grounds on which it considered that certain prices in the applicant's tender were unusually low and that the tender did not comply with the relevant legal provisions in the event of performance of the contract in Brussels or Luxembourg.

Finally, the applicants consider that the Commission infringed the procedure for checking that the prices were lawful, in so far as (i) the Commission excluded the applicant's tender on the basis of the procedure in respect of unusually low prices, whereas the tender was financially sound, (ii) the Commission did not take into account the reasons provided by the applicants and (iii) the contested decision was not based on an accurate account of the facts.