In its Judgment of 29 January 2013 in Joined Cases T‑339/10 and T‑532/10 Cosepuri Soc. Coop. pA v European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the General Court has ruled again on the topical issue of the protection of confidentiality and business secrets in tender evaluation--and, in principle, has shown a more balanced approach than in previous Judgments concerned with transparency at debriefing stage.
However, in my opinion, the case law in this area still falls short from guaranteeing a proper balance between transparency and protection of business secrets and continues to promote excessive disclosure.
In the case at hand, Cosepuri challenged the EFSA's evaluation procedure on the basis of the confidential treatment of financial assessment. The GC has taken no issue with the degree of confidentiality imposed by EFSA, but on a series of grounds that still seem (partially) inadequate:
32 First, the applicant calls into question the fact that Part II.8.2 of the tender specifications provided that the tender evaluation procedure was to be confidential. It should be noted in that regard that the applicant has the right to challenge, as an incidental plea, the lawfulness of the specifications in the present action (see, to that effect, Case T‑495/04 Belfass v Council [2008] ECR II‑781, paragraph 44). […]33 Article 89(1) of the Financial Regulation provides that all public contracts financed in whole or in part by the budget are to comply, inter alia, with the principle of transparency. In the present case, it must be noted that Part II.8.2 of the specifications, which provides that the procedure for the evaluation of the tenders is to be conducted in secret, satisfies the requirement of preserving the confidentiality of the tenders and the need to avoid, in principle, contact between the contracting authority and the tenderers (see, on this point, Article 99 of the Financial Regulation and Article 148 of the Implementing Rules). The principle of transparency, referred to in Article 89(1) of the Financial Regulation, which is invoked by the applicant, must be reconciled with those requirements. Accordingly, there is no basis on which it can be concluded that Part II.8 of the specifications is vitiated by unlawfulness.34 Second, the applicant challenges the fact that it was not able to ascertain the price proposed by the successful tenderer. In particular, the applicant states that EFSA ensured that it would not be possible for any subsequent verification to be carried out by redacting from the evaluation report the price offered by the successful tenderer. In that regard, without there being any need to rule in the present case on whether the price proposed by the successful tenderer formed part of the information which the contracting authority should have communicated to the unsuccessful tenderers (sic), it is clear from the evidence submitted that the applicant was in a position to ascertain the price in question. It is apparent from Section 2.4 of the evaluation committee report that the applicant and the successful tenderer offered the same price in respect of points 2 to 7 of the financial bid, both obtaining the maximum score of 15 points. The price offered by the successful tenderer in respect of points 2 to 7 of the financial bid is therefore abundantly clear from the evaluation committee report. Moreover, with regard to point 1 of the financial bid, the evaluation committee report indicated the price offered by the applicant and the mark obtained. Although it does not expressly refer to the price offered by the successful tenderer, that report specifies the mark obtained by it. Taking account of those factors, it was possible to calculate, without any difficulty, the price proposed by the successful tenderer in respect of point 1 of the financial bid, as submitted by EFSA in connection with the second plea. Furthermore, the Court has been able to verify, by way of the measure of inquiry adopted at the hearing (see paragraph 16 above), that the price mentioned by EFSA in its written pleadings was in fact the price proposed by the successful tenderer. In view of all the foregoing considerations, the Court considers that, even if EFSA had erred by failing to indicate expressly to the applicant the price proposed by the successful tenderer, such an error would have had no effect on the lawfulness of EFSA’s decision to reject the applicant’s tender and award the contract at issue to another tenderer whose bid was considered to be better, since the applicant was in a position to ascertain that price. The applicant’s arguments in that regard must therefore be rejected.35 Third, with regard to the principle of sound administration relied on by the applicant, according to case‑law, guarantees afforded by the European Union legal order in administrative proceedings include, in particular, the principle of sound administration, which entails the duty on the part of the competent institution to examine carefully and impartially all the relevant aspects of the individual case (see the judgment of 15 September 2011 in Case T‑407/07 CMB and Christof v Commission, not published in the ECR, paragraph 182 and the case‑law cited). In the present case, the arguments put forward by the applicant in the first plea, which essentially consist in criticising the fact that it was not granted access to the financial bid of the successful tenderer, do not demonstrate that EFSA failed to examine carefully and impartially all the relevant aspects of the case. In the absence of more detailed evidence, the applicant’s arguments in that regard must be rejected. (T-339/10 and 532/10 at paras. 32 to 35, emphasis added).
In my view, paragraphs 33 and 35 of the Cosepuri Judgment must be welcome, as they set a more balanced framework for the assessment of the obligation to disclose confidential information and business secrets under the principles of transparency and good administration.
On the contrary, paragraph 34 deserves a clear rejection, given that the GC keeps a very formalistic approach to the protection of confidential information and takes no issue with the fact that such sensitive information as price can be disclosed indirectly, and considers that that does not infringe either the rights of the 'disclosed' undertaking to protection of its business secrets, nor the procedural rights of the disappointed bidder that is granted indirect access to that information.
I think that the GC should have taken a stronger position and clearly confirmed that both direct and indirect disclosure of price elements and financial evaluations can be restricted or excluded on grounds of protection of confidentiality. Otherwise, the incentives continue to push contracting authorities for an excessive degree of transparency in public procurement settings--which creates significant risks of collusion [Sánchez Graells, "Public Procurement and Competition: Some Challenges Arising from Recent Developments in EU Public Procurement Law" in Bovis (ed) Research Handbook on European Public Procurement (forthcoming), http://ssrn.com/abstract=2206502].