When will you show me the papers? Technical capacity, technical dossiers and verification during the procurement process (C-14/17)

By Avius Quovis

In his Opinion of 28 February 2018 in VAR, C-14/17, EU:C:2018:135 (not available in English), AG Campos Sánchez-Bordona addressed a tricky preliminary question regarding the procurement of spare parts for buses, trolleybuses and tramways under the 2004 Utilities Procurement Directive (Dir 2004/17/EC). The legal dispute concerned the procedural stage at which contracting authorities must require tenderers to provide certificates attesting compliance with the applicable technical specifications. AG Campos suggested that such phase needs not always be prior to the award of the contract.

This case is relevant in the context of the contracting authorities’ verification duties prior to the award of the contract. In my view, while couched in promising pro-competitive terms aimed at preventing the imposition of disproportionate participation requirements, the approach followed by AG Campos can create legal uncertainty and an irreconcilable functional tension with prior cases such as EVN and Wienstrom (C-448/01, EU:C:2003:651). Therefore, the VAR Opinion merits some critical discussion.

Background

It is important to note that the VAR case has the relevant peculiarity that the contracting authority (presumably) owning a stock of vehicles of a given brand, had specified for the spare parts to be of such named brand ‘or equivalent’ as part of the technical specifications. Therefore, the relevant certificates were not of compliance with functional technical specifications or prescribed technical standards, but rather ‘certificates of equivalence’ between the offered parts and the named branded parts. The contracting authority had indicated in the tender documentation that such certificates of equivalence had to be submitted with the first supply of equivalent parts. As a result, the chosen tenderer was awarded the contract without having provided documentary evidence of the equivalence between the (cheaper) offered parts and the (pricier) branded ones. As could be expected, after the contract was awarded to the competing supplier, the ‘original equipment manufacturer’ (OEM, or owner of the brand) challenged the decision on the grounds that Dir 2004/17 required submission of the relevant certificates pre-award and that the contracting authority could not legally award a contract without having carried out minimal technical compliance verification.

The canonical view

The position taken by the disappointed tenderer that equivalence certificates should have been required prior to the award of the contract represents, in my opinion, the canonical view. Indeed, this was also the position of the Italian Government and the European Commission in this case, both of which held that a systemic interpretation of the relevant rules (ie Art 34(8), in relation to Art 34(3) and 34(4) Dir 2004/17) leads to the conclusion that certificates must be required prior to the award of the contract (see AGO, para 22).

As AG Campos sums up their arguments (see paras 38-41), such systemic/functional interpretation would derive from the fact that (i) proof of technical equivalence is a necessary element for the contracting authority to reach a judgment on which is the most economically advantageous tender amongst those received; (ii) in the absence of a prior verification of the tenderers’ ability to deliver on their contractual obligations, a contracting authority faced with non-compliant supplies would only be left with the option to terminate the contract, which is undesirable; and (iii) given that Art 34(8) Dir 2004/17 solely establishes the exceptionality of the recourse to a named brand and prohibits it except if twinned with the explicit mention of the acceptability of equivalent solutions, the general requirements for verification of technical compliance under Arts 34(3) and 34(4) Dir 2004/17—both of which require pre-award submission of documentation—should be applicable to cases where the contracting authority has made use of the exceptional reference to branded products.

In my view, this reflects the correct interpretation of the rules on verification of technical compliance under Dir 2004/17—and the same logic that remains applicable under the revised rules of the 2014 Public Procurement Package.

An alternate view

However, taking an alternate view, AG Campos suggested that Dir 2004/17 does not necessarily require tenderers to provide—and, implicitly, does not necessarily require contracting authorities to demand that tenderers submit—the relevant certificates prior to award of the contract if (i) the contracting authority has specified products of a named brand ‘or equivalent’, and (ii) it has indicated that such documents need only be submitted with the first supply of spare parts (para 74). The reasons given for this approach—which are flanked by thought-provoking references to the competition law rules applicable to the distribution of vehicles and their parts (not to be discussed in this post)—can be summarised as follows (see paras 42 and ff):

(1) AG Campos considers that the possibility to use a direct reference to branded products ‘or equivalent’ changes the contours of the technical verification to be undertaken by the contracting authority. The rules requiring pre-award verification are justified by the uncertainty or indetermination derived from the discretion conferred to the contracting authority in the way it can set technical specifications (eg by performance requirements alone, or mixed with technical standards). In contrast, “[w]hat explains the singular mention of a trademark, a patent or similar figures (always with the addition of their ‘equivalents’) is that the space of indetermination disappears. When, for example, it is only possible to supply spare parts for vehicles corresponding to a single brand …, or their equivalents, the contracting authority has already chosen to make "a sufficiently precise and intelligible description of the object of the contract". This is the key difference with respect to paragraphs 3 and 4 of Article 34 of Directive 2004/17, which makes it possible to deal disparately with the requirements on certificates of equivalence” (AGO C-14/17, para 43, own translation from Spanish). In other words, the reference to the brand ‘or equivalent’ would have made the technical specifications so precise that no verification of technical compliance would be necessary prior to the award of the contract.

In my view, this is a functionally and logically untenable position. Given that the use of a reference to branded products is only acceptable “on an exceptional basis, where a sufficiently precise and intelligible description of the subject-matter of the contract pursuant to paragraphs 3 and 4 is not possible”, the recourse to the brand can only be considered as short-hand or a proxy for what are otherwise insufficiently precise or inintelligible technical descriptions of the goods to be supplied. This cannot be seen as excluding the need to assess technical equivalence, but simply as setting the technical benchmark against which such verification needs to be carried out—for otherwise, how could the contracting authority make sure that the supplies of anyone by the OEM meet the requirements?

(2) AG Campos also considers that there is a clash of public and private interests that excludes a requirement of unavoidable pre-award verification of technical compliance. Or, in other words, “[i]t is of course legitimate to have the concern not to frustrate the success of the procedure, which could happen if the contracting authority that had not previously required [the equivalence certificates] would find, in the end, that the successful tenderer is not in a position to prove the equivalence of the pieces … That aspiration, however, cannot supersede the essential principles of public procurement, in particular, the need to guarantee bidders have equal access and are not confronted with ‘unjustified obstacles to the opening of public contracts to competition’” (AGO C-14/17, paras 48-49, own translation from Spanish).

This clash of interests between the contracting authority’s interest in carrying out sound pre-award technical compliance verification and the tenderers’ interest in being allowed access to the tender is constructed on the assumption that, for a supplier to be able to participate in a tender requiring the supply of original or equivalent spare parts, it would need to have individualised certificates for each and every one of the spare parts to be supplied (in the case at hand, over 2,000 parts). This would indeed give an advantage to the OEM manufacturer, which is of course under no need to certify compliance with its own technical standards.

However, this seems like an extremely rigid approach to technical compliance verification through documentation, which is only explained by the conflation of qualitative selection and technical verification carried out in the next set of reasons. A contracting authority could have taken a proportionate approach eg by requiring the submission of samples with the tender, together with a certificate of equivalence of the sample parts or sufficient technical information about the sample parts as to demonstrate that equivalence of the contractual supplies would be achieved. That would allow for a non-restrictive design of the tender procedure not requiring the award of the contract without carrying out sufficient verification of technical compliance.

(3) As AG Campos explains in his Opinion (see paras 57 and ff), in the case at hand, the contracting authority was able to award the contract without the need to receive documentation attesting technical equivalence because it had carried out an unduly restrictive qualitative selection by requiring that tenderers demonstrated experience in supplying a high value of spare parts of the named brand or equivalent in the previous three years. Indeed, he considers that “[p]rocurement documentation drawn up in those terms is restrictive, since it circumscribes the circle of recipients to those who have already manufactured spare parts of the [named] brand, whether original or equivalent, which excludes the participation of other manufacturers … the procuring entity, which had already imposed this rigorous conditions, could reasonably rely on them as criteria to assess the technical standing of the tenderers, without having to require them, in addition, to initially provide the certificates of equivalence of the 2,195 pieces referred to in the supply contract” (AGO C-14/17, para 60, own translation from Spanish).

In my view, this determines the existence not of one, but two, breaches of EU public procurement law. First, because the qualitative selection criteria are indeed too narrow and exclude the possibility for other OEMs or other ‘generic spare parts’ manufacturers to tender for the supply of pieces equivalent to the specific named brand on the basis of technical capability and previous experience in delivering original or equivalent pieces of other named brands (or OEMs). Second and on an alternative understanding of the facts, because in VAR the contracting authority would not have actually waived its obligation to carry out pre-award technical compliance certification by accepting certificates with the first supplies, but it would rather have carried out the verification at qualitative selection stage—which does not seem in line with the distinction between qualitative selection and award criteria according to Lianakis (C-532/06, EU:C:2008:40). Indeed, from a functional perspective, it seemed clear that in VAR the contracting authority screened potential suppliers on the basis of their ability to meet the particular technical specifications of the supplies it required, rather than on the basis of general technical capabilities to produce original or equivalent spare parts for buses, trolleybuses and tramways.

By taking the (inadvertent?) position that ‘two wrongs make a right’, AG Campos may have missed an additional important point. In practice, his position would allow contracting authorities to include requirements in the tender documentation that they have no intention of verifying prior to the award of the contract. This runs functionally contrary to the precedent of EVN and Wienstrom. There, the CJEU clearly established that “where a contracting authority lays down an award criterion indicating that it neither intends, nor is able, to verify the accuracy of the information supplied by the tenderers, it infringes the principle of equal treatment, because such a criterion does not ensure the transparency and objectivity of the tender procedure” (C-448/01, para 51). The difficulty here is not that the information cannot be verified at all, but that the information cannot be verified during the tender procedure—which in my view is a logical implication of the EVN and Wienstrom Judgment. Even if I would not support such an approach, this possibility for deferred verification during contractual execution could maybe only change now that contract modification is explicitly regulated in the 2014 Public Procurement Package; but any such logic would not apply to procurement covered by the 2004 Utilities Directive.

Moreover, the deferral of verification of technical compliance to contract execution and award of the contract without documentary or sample-based checks would create two undesirable effects: (i) opening up the possibility of self-certification of technical compliance by the tenderers and (ii) conflating verification of compliance with technical specifications for award purposes and quality control for contract performance purposes, which are not necessarily identical functions and certainly serve two distinct legal aims; respectively, ensuring the objectivity and probity of the award decision and ensuring compliance with contractual obligations.

Overall consideration

On the whole, in my view, the VAR Opinion is flawed by a misconstruction of the tests and verification carried out by the contracting authority, as well as by a misunderstanding of the technical simplification expected to derive from the exceptional recourse to branded ‘or equivalent’ supplies. As a matter of principle, contracting authorities should not be allowed to award contracts without carrying out sound checks on technical compliance. They should also not be allowed to defer them to contract execution without more. Contracting authorities should also not be allowed to use technical specifications as qualitative selection criteria due to the artificial narrowing of competition that involves (as clearly stressed, but not thoroughly analysed, by AG Campos in his Opinion).

Therefore, I would argue for the CJEU not to follow AG Campos on this occasion and rather clarify that (i) technical compliance cannot be deferred beyond the award of the contract, regardless of the use of references to branded ‘or equivalent’ products, and (ii) it is for the national court to determine whether the rules on technical specifications and qualitative selection were infringed in the design of the procedure in the case at hand. Otherwise, if the CJEU decided to follow the VAR Opinion, its case law would continue to add internal inconsistencies and unnecessary complexity in this already difficult area of procurement regulation.

AG proposes extension of Falk Pharma doctrine to framework agreements, for wrong reasons (C-9/17)

In his Opinion of 13 December 2017 in Tirkkonen, C-9/17, EU:C:2017:962 (not available in English), Advocate General Campos Sanchez-Bordona has proposed the application to a framework agreement for the provision to farmers of advisory services funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (FEADER) of the Falk Pharma doctrine (ie that the absence of a choice in concreto of the awardee of a contract by the contracting/funding authority excludes the applicability of the EU public procurement rules; see Judgment of 2 June 2016 in Falk Pharma, C-410/14, EU:C:2016:399, and here).

In his view, the fact that individual farmers—and not the competent authority administering the FEADER funds—could choose the specific rural advisor that would provide them the services carved the framework agreement out of the scope of application of the EU (and domestic) public procurement rules—which were therefore not applicable to the tender of the framework agreement in the first place.

In my view, the Tirkkonen Opinion engages in an unjustifiably expansive interpretation of the Falk Pharma Judgment that both ignores some of the basic elements in the functioning of framework agreements, and takes that Judgment’s functionally-erroneous interpretation of the concept of procurement one step too far. If the Tirkkonen Opinion was followed, in combination with Falk Pharma, it would create a significant risk of ineffectiveness of the EU public procurement rules for aggregate and dynamic contracting mechanisms. Therefore, in this post, I present my reasons for a plea to the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) not to follow AG Campos in this occasion, as I think his approach is problematic, both from a positive and a normative perspective.

Tirkkonen – a bad case raising the wrong issues

Why ignore explicit requirements in secondary EU law?

The way the preliminary reference in Tirkkonen reached the ECJ evidences that this is a bad set of circumstances on which to develop the case law on the scope of application of the EU public procurement rules. In the case at hand, the Finnish Agency for Rural Space (Maaseutuvirasto) tendered a framework contract for the provision of advisory services to farmers. Given the (expected) high volume of demand for advisory services, the framework was intended to include as many qualified rural advisors as possible, subject to their passing of an exam to ensure their knowledge and competence (AGO, C-9/17, para 19). Rural advisors admitted to the framework agreement could then be chosen by individual farmers (who should in principle chose the closest advisor, although some exceptions applied), and their services would be remunerated on the basis of hourly rates paid by Maaseutuvirasto, with the beneficiary farmer covering applicable VAT charges (AGO, C-9/17, para 18). It is not explicitly stated in AG Campos' Opinion, but it is worth stressing that the Maaseutuvirasto had set the hourly rate payable to rural advisors, and that the award (ie admission to the framework contract) was to be decided solely on quality (ie competency to provide the service) (see here for details (in Finnish), and thanks to K-M Halonen for help with the translation). The suppression of price competition will be relevant for the assessment below.

The advisory services organised by Maaseutuvirasto were ultimately funded by FEADER for the period 2014-2020 and, under the relevant rules (Reg 1305/2013/EU, Art 15(3), and Impl Reg 808/2014/EU, Art 7), the selection by the Finnish (and all other national) competent authority of the providers of those advisory services was explicitly subjected to European and domestic public procurement rules, which required for the selection to be made: ‘through calls for tenders. The selection procedure shall be governed by public procurement law and shall be open to both public and private bodies’ (Art 15(3) Reg 1305/2013/EU). It was reiterated that the 'calls for tenders referred to in Article 15(3) of Regulation (EU) No 1305/2013 shall follow the applicable Union and national public procurement rules' (Art 7 Impl Reg 808/2014/EU). The Finnish government had no doubt that EU and domestic procurement rules applied, and thus tendered the contract as described above.

Therefore, against this background, a preliminary reference enquiring about the potential non-applicability of the procurement rules to the tender of the framework agreement despite the explicit requirements in special (in the sense of lex specialis) secondary EU legislation is beyond bizarre (see below). However, AG Campos does not see a problem here, and considers that

… that reference to procurement law must be interpreted in the sense that the procedure for the selection of rural advisors must comply with the principles (of non-discrimination, equal treatment and transparency) that govern that sector of the legal order. It does not portray, in my view, a requirement that implies subjection to each and all of the provisions of the EU Directives on public sector procurement (AGO, C-9/17, para 34, own translation from Spanish).

I disagree with this assessment, which is not based on any specific reasons, and which violates the natural reading of Reg 1305/2013/EU and Impl Reg 808/2014/EU. Moreover, it comes to reduce the value of the explicit reference to procurement law in those provisions, and to collapse it into the general principles that are common with general internal market law and, more importantly, the eponymous general principles of EU law—which would be applicable anyway to all activities implementing the relevant instruments of secondary EU law. Therefore, AG Campos’ position not solely deviates from the natural reading of the provisions, but also runs contrary to the functional reasons for the inclusion of the explicit reference to procurement rules (ie to go beyond the general requirements of the always applicable primary EU law). Thus, already on the weakness of the reasons for a deviation from the literal and functional interpretation of those provisions of secondary EU law, I think that the ECJ should largely ignore AG Campos’ Opinion and simply answer the question by confirming the applicability of the EU (and domestic) procurement rules on the basis of the explicit requirements in Reg 1305/2013/EU and Impl Reg 808/2014/EU.

Why not simply state that Finnish procurement law was wrong?

Beyond that first clear-cut solution, which I think highly unlikely the ECJ will adopt, the Court will have to explore the general (as in lex generalis) reasons that still justify the applicability of the EU and (domestic) procurement rules to the case—also contrary to AG Campos’ Opinion. To that end, it is still necessary to understand why the preliminary question was sent to the ECJ—which is explained by a misconstruction of the EU public procurement rules and, in particular, by the harsh consequences of an exceedingly restrictive approach to documentary clarification in the domestic Finnish procurement rules that violates the Manova-Slovensko line of case law (see here, here and here).

In that regard, it is worth noting that the preliminary reference derived from the fact that, in the context of the tender for the framework agreement, Ms Tirkkonen failed to properly complete all required documentation—ie she had failed to indicate whether she accepted or rejected the tender conditions attached to the draft framework agreement (AGO, C-9/17, para 20). She was thus excluded from the framework agreement. Her complaint is fundamentally grounded on the fact that she should have been given the opportunity to clarify whether she accepted the conditions or not prior to her exclusion from the framework agreement.

It is a settled legal fact of the case that, under Finnish law, the omission of that indication of acceptance of the general conditions would only be susceptible if the clarification or correction of the tender was not controlled by public procurement law (which excluded such possibility of clarification), and was rather subjected to general administrative law governing the relationships between citizens and the public administration (AGO, C-9/17, para 3).

Therefore, the harshness of the Finnish procurement rules is behind the interest of the claimant in excluding the tender from the scope of application of domestic procurement rules—which can only be done by seeking a carve-out from the concept of procurement under the EU rules. And, more importantly, the Finnish approach is in contravention of EU law—oddly, as confirmed by AG Campos himself: ‘if Directive 2004/18 was applicable, it would result that the contracting authority would be able to accept, in the context of public procurement, the correction of formal shortcomings that do not imply the submission of a new offer, or substantially altered the terms of the initial offer. On this point, I refer to my Opinion in case MA.T.I. SUD y DUEMMESGR (C-523/16 y C-536/16, EU:C:2017:868)’ (AGO, C-9/17, para 23, fn 7, own translation from Spanish; for discussion of MA.T.I. Sud, see here).

Consequently, the second clear-cut solution for the ECJ is to (i) pick up on the incorrect interpretation of EU public procurement law that underpins the preliminary reference, (ii) reformulate the question and consider that it asked whether the exclusion from the framework agreement due to the formal shortcoming in the documentation and without the possibility to correct it was required or allowed by EU procurement law, (iii) reiterate the Manova-Slovensko case law, and (iv) leave it for the national court to decide on the legality of the exclusion (with a clear hint that exclusion in this case was not justified, due to the logical assumption that would-be rural advisors understood that accepting the general conditions of the draft contract was a requirement for entering into specific contracts, and that confirming such acceptance does not constitute a new offer or substantial modification of the initial offer).

For some reason, however, I am also not optimistic that the ECJ will adopt this second solution and pass on the opportunity to clarify its Falk Pharma case law. Should the ECJ engage with the question and the issues raised by AG Campos, and for the reasons below, I think that the ECJ should provide clarification of Falk Pharma in the opposite direction to that adopted by the Tirkkonen Opinion.

Tirkkonen Opinion ignores how framework agreements work

Once the argument concentrates on the definition of procurement under Article 1(2)(a) of Directive 2004/18/EC, AG Campos summarises the Falk Pharma doctrine as establishing that

… the choice of a tender and, thus, of a successful tenderer, is intrinsically linked to the regulation of public contracts by that directive and, consequently, to the concept of ‘public contract’ within the meaning of Article 1(2) of that directive (AGO, C-9/17, para 37, own translation from Spanish, with reference to Falk Pharma, para 38).

And that

… in the public contracts subjected to Directive 2004/18 a final awardee must exist, which is preferred to the rest of its competitors on the basis of the characteristics of its offer. And this key element is applicable ‘for every contract, framework agreement, and every establishment of a dynamic purchasing system’, for which ‘the contracting authorities are to draw up a written report which is to include the name of the successful tenderer and the reasons why his tender was selected (AGO, C-9/17, para 38, own translation from Spanish, with reference to Falk Pharma, para 39).

This leads AG Campos to argue that, in the framework tendered in Tirkkonen, ‘it is not possible to identify the existence of award criteria of the advisory services contracts, but solely of criteria for the selection of economic operators with capability to offer those services (sic)’ (AGO, C-9/17, para 39, own translation from Spanish and emphasis added). AG Campos continues with a discussion of the distinction between selection and award criteria as per Ambisig (C-601/13, EU:C:2015:204, paras 40 and ff, see here), which I consider irrelevant—for the crucial point is that, in multi-supplier framework agreements (as well as in dynamic purchasing systems, as discussed here), the inclusion in the framework does not (ever) imply the choice of the ‘winner’ of the (call-off) contracts but, conversely, exclusion from the framework does prevent the excluded economic operators from providing the service.

In my view, this is the relevant aspect, for the inclusion in the framework is not simply an identification of the capable or qualified economic operators, but the limitation to those included in the framework of the possibility of entering into specific contracts in the terms set in the framework. AG Campos’ maximalistic position would lead to the inescapable logical conclusion that framework agreements are not public contracts for the purposes of EU public procurement law, despite being explicitly regulated, quod non.

The flawed logic of the premise established by AG Campos in para 39 of his Opinion makes the rest of his reasoning crumble. In my view, this defect affects his reasoning that

… what is determinative, in relation to the contracts subject to Directive 2004/18, is not the checking of the economic operators’ capability to provide the advisory service (qualitative selection criterion), but the comparison of the offers of the competing tenderers, once considered capable, with a view to finally chose that or those which will be entrusted with such provision (award criterion) (AGO, C-9/17, para 44, own translation from Spanish).

And that

… the selection that matters, for the purposes of the concept of public contract in Directive 2004/18, is that which results from the comparison between the capabilities and merits of the offers of the different candidates. That is, what is decisive is the final award, comparatively or by contrast, to the best offer, not the initial selection by reference to a threshold meeting which does not imply competition between the candidates (AGO, C-9/17, para 45, own translation from Spanish).

Ultimately, following this same reasoning, AG Campos takes issue with the fact that there was no competition between the candidates that expressed interest in being included in the framework agreement because the contracting authority ‘did not restrict ab initio the number of potential providers of the services, nor did it carry out a comparison of the offers between them, or chose in a definitive manner one or several of them, on the basis of a comparative evaluation of their respective contents, to the exclusion of the rest’ (AGO, C-9/17, para 48, own translation from Spanish).

However, this triggers two issues. First, under Dir 2004/18/EC, there was no obligation to establish a maximum number of economic operators to be admitted to a framework agreement. Art 32(4) Dir 2004/18/EC solely established a minimum of three for multi-supplier framework agreements, but did not require a maximum number. Second, it is in the nature of framework agreements—particularly those involving mini-competitions, as per Art 32(4)II Dir 2004/18/EC—that the contracting authority, at the point of deciding which economic operators are included in the framework, does not ‘chose in a definitive manner one or several [offers], on the basis of a comparative evaluation of their respective contents, to the exclusion of the rest’ for the purposes of the award of the relevant call-off contracts—which is the situation comparable to Tirkkonen. In particular, it is possible that an economic operator included in a framework agreement is never awarded a call-off, especially if there are mini-competitions, which in my view deactivates the functional reasoning of AG Campos.

In my view, AG Campos also misinterprets the implications of the fact that the framework agreement in Tirkkonen was closed to the economic operators not initially admitted to it, in relation to the ECJ’s Judgment in Falk Pharma. In that regard, it is relevant that the argument was made that the closed nature of the framework agreement distinguishes it from the open-ended mechanism discussed in Falk Pharma, which AG Campos rejects in the following terms:

It is true that, strictly, by limiting the contracting system, during its term, to the economic operators initially admitted by the Agency [Maaseutuvirasto] (which prevents access by new advisors) a certain quantitative restriction is being imposed. However, this is but a consequence of the pure and rigorous temporary limitation of the system of funding for advisory services, which is parallel to the program of rural development for continental Finland 2014-2020 (sic).

For the rest, the reference by the Court of Justice in Falk Pharma to the permanent openness of the contracting system to new tenderers was not, in my view, the ratio decidendi of that case, but rather a statement made ad abundantia. What was determinative in that occasion was that the contracting authority had not awarded, in exclusive, the contract to one of the tenderers [Falk Pharma, para 38].

In this case, just like in the Falk Pharma case, there has not been any element of true competition between the candidates, to evaluate which of their offers is the best and displaces, simultaneously, the remaining other (AGO, C-9/17, paras 51-53, own translation from Spanish)

The reasoning in these paragraphs is strongly skewed towards a very narrow understanding of procurement as implying the award of contracts solely to a winning tenderer, which is not the way framework agreements (and dynamic purchasing systems) operate. I cannot share the analysis in any of these steps of the reasoning.

Firstly, I think that a temporary justification for the irrelevance of the selective nature of a framework agreement is a logical non sequitur. The fact that the funding is limited to the period 2014-2020 can be used to justify the creation of a framework of six years’ duration, but it can have no bearing on the fact that a restriction of the potential suppliers derives from the framework agreement itself. The Maaseutuvirasto could have chosen a fully open licensing system, which would then have avoided the situation of excluding would-be rural advisors as a result of the one-off chance of being accepted into the system (which is a structural result of the framework agreement).

Secondly, in Falk Pharma, the ECJ did not simply consider the lack of choice of a specific supplier and consider the open-ended nature of the ‘authorisation procedure’ ad abundantia, but rather made this a crucial aspect of the analysis, by establishing it as a defining characteristic of the mechanism (see C-410/14, para 14). This is particularly clear on the explicit distinction the ECJ made with framework agreements when it stressed that

it should be noted that the special feature of a contractual scheme, such as that at issue in [Falk Pharma], namely its permanent availability for the duration of its validity to interested operators and, therefore, its not being limited to a preliminary period in the course of which undertakings are invited to express their interest to the public entity concerned, suffices to distinguish that scheme from a framework agreement (C-410/14, para 41, emphasis added).

Finally, the third point on absence of competition is also problematic. Taken to its logical extreme, this would mean that contracting authorities could avoid compliance with procurement rules where they set ‘take it or leave it’ conditions for the provision of services or supplies. This makes no sense because, particularly where there is scarcity in the number of awards (in this case, a limit of total available funding, as well as the restriction in the number of potential awardees that results from the closing of the framework agreement at the initial stage of the 2014-2020 period), there is always implicitly an element of competition (ie to tender or not, and tendering results in a constraint on the overall number/value of awards available to the other competitors) and the fact that the contracting authority limits the dimensions in which the tenderers compete (in Tirkkonen, and implicitly, their geographical coverage) should not exclude this from compliance with procurement rules.

For all the reasons above, I think the Tirkkonen Opinion misconstrues the relevance of the openness of the system in Falk Pharma, and the explicit distinction made by the ECJ between that system and framework agreements. Moreover, the Opinion gives excessive weight to the need to compare tenders or offers (and the choice of one, and almost only one, to the exclusion of all others) for (covered) procurement to take place. In particular, it misrepresents some of the particular features of framework agreements and opens the door to their de-regulation where contracting authorities set ‘take it or leave it’ conditions (eg, in this case, provision of services at rates established by the contracting/funding authority) and then delegate or decentralise decisions on call-offs, even if they provide general guidelines on the way they should take place. For the reasons set out below, I think the Opinion is not only inaccurate from a positive legal analysis perspective (as discussed so far), but also from a normative perspective.

The undesirable combined effect of Falk Pharma and Tirkkonen

Should the ECJ follow the Tirkkonen Opinion, and as a result of the cumulative effect of the resulting expanded Falk Pharma doctrine, Member States willing to avoid compliance with EU public procurement rules could easily do so by creating systems of ‘user/beneficiary choice’. This could be quite problematic particularly in the context of services and supply contracts, where the existence of end users detached from the contracting authority can always enable this type of mechanisms.

In the extreme, if central purchasing bodies created this type of mechanisms for use by individual decision-makers (eg civil servants or public employees), the atomisation of procurement that would ensue could well result in a de-regulation of the procurement function. Procurement rules would not apply to the CPB because it would not ‘choose definitely’ the specific supplier or provider, and they may not apply to the decision to call-off that does exercise that choice if the value of the call-offs is small enough—which would then trigger litigation around the legality or less of the atomisation of the procurement decision on the last stage, for which analysis the concept of ‘separate operational units’ in Art 5(2) of Directive 2014/24/EU (see also recital (20)) would become highly relevant; see K-M Halonen, 'Characteristics of Separate Operational Units – A Study on Aggregation Rules under Public Procurement Law' (2017) report for the Competition Authority; see here. There is thus a functional need to keep proper checks and balances at the level of creation of the mechanism.

On the whole, I was already concerned that Falk Pharma was eroding the scope and effectiveness of the EU public procurement rules, but Tirkkonen could magnify such undesirable effect. Moreover, this would simply displace the problem towards general EU free movement law, which is not a sensible approach in view of the more developed criteria and rules in the EU public procurement framework. Thus, also from a normative perspective, I would plea to the ECJ not to adopt the same approach of AG Campos on this occasion.

ECJ avoids providing guidance on intensity of judicial review of procurement decisions by sticking to strictly formalistic approach: The Gaping hole remains (C-171/15)

In its Judgment of 14 December 2016, Connexxion Taxi Services, C-171/15, EU:C:2016:948, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has provided clarification on whether contracting authorities can decide to subject their decisions to exclude economic operators from procurement procedures to a proportionality assessment even where such assessment would deviate from the strict rules created in the tender documentation by the contracting authorities themselves.

In the case at hand, a Dutch contracting authority had published tender documents that seemed to create an automatic obligation to exclude by stating that: 'A tender to which a ground for exclusion applies shall be set aside and shall not be eligible for further (substantive) assessment'. However, the contracting authority subsequently sought to rely on generally applicable Dutch administrative law (in particular, the Explanatory Memorandum of the law transposing the 2004 public procurement Directive) to subject the exclusion decision to a proportionality assessment. On the basis of that proportionality analysis, the contracting authority decided not to exclude the tenderer and to award it the contract.

This triggered the challenge by a competing tenderer, which claimed that, having found that the tenderer had been guilty of grave professional misconduct, the contracting authority was not in a position to make an assessment of proportionality. That assessment would have already been carried out by including the misconduct as an absolute ground for exclusion in the descriptive document. Given the wording of the latter, it was argued that it would be contrary to the principles of public access, transparency and equality in matters of administrative procurement for the contracting authority to have the power to assess the proportionality of the ground for exclusion.

The Dutch referring court asked the ECJ to consider whether Art 45(2) of Directive 2004/18/EC precluded a contracting authority from being obliged to assess under national law, and in accordance with the principle of proportionality, whether a tenderer which had been guilty of grave professional misconduct should be excluded from a contract. The referring court put particular stress on the fact that the ECJ had not adjudicated on the importance to be attached to the fact that, in the tender conditions, the contracting authority had provided for the rejection, without any examination of the substance, of any tender to which a ground of exclusion applies. In answering those questions, the ECJ decided to stick very closely to two of its lines of case law that, ultimately, create a very difficult (dis)functional situation.

First, following precedents in La Cascina and Others, C‑226/04 and C‑228/04, EU:C:2006:94, and in Consorzio Stabile Libor Lavori Pubblici, C‑358/12, EU:C:2014:2063, the ECJ reiterated that the discretionary exclusion grounds regulated in Art 45(2) Dir 2004/18 (and now in art 57(4) Dir 2014/24) do 'not provide for uniform application at EU level of the grounds of exclusion it mentions, since the Member States may choose not to apply those grounds of exclusion at all or to incorporate them into national law with varying degrees of rigour according to legal, economic or social considerations prevailing at national level. In that context, the Member States have the power to make the criteria laid down in Article 45(2) less onerous or more flexible' (C-171/15, para 29). This led the ECJ to establish that

31 As far as concerns the grounds for excluding a tenderer which has been guilty of grave professional misconduct from a contract, it is clear from the order for reference that [Dutch] legislation requires the contracting authority concerned, which establishes that the tenderer has been guilty of such misconduct, to determine, in accordance with the principle of proportionality, whether the tenderer should in fact be excluded.

32 Thus, it appears that that assessment of the proportionality of the exclusion makes the application of the ground of exclusion relating to grave professional misconduct laid down in Article 45(2)(d) of Directive 2004/18 more flexible ... Furthermore, it follows from recital 2 thereof that the principle of proportionality applies in a general manner to public procurement procedures (C-171/15, paras 31-32, emphasis added).

Ultimately, then, national legislation which requires a contracting authority to assess, in accordance with the principle of proportionality, whether it is in fact appropriate to exclude from a public contract a tenderer which has been guilty of grave professional misconduct is compatible with EU public procurement law (C-171/15, para 33).

Second, and in stark contrast with this seemingly functional and principles-oriented interpretation of the rules in Directive 2004/18/EC, the ECJ then moved on to adopt a very formalistic approach when considering the specific situation where the contracting authority would have excluded the possibility of such proportionality assessment in the tender documentation by establishing that exclusion on specific grounds would not be subjected to any substantive assessment. It may have been relevant at this point to know with more precision whether that would have been illegal under Dutch law for the tender documentation could be seen as contra legem (as, in my view, it would have been eg under Spanish law due to the public administration's duty to conduct its business with subjection to the applicable laws and regulations).

Be it as it may, the ECJ framed the issue in the following terms:

 36 It is conceivable that, when the contract documents are drafted, the contracting authority concerned may take the view, in accordance with the nature of that contract, the sensitive nature of the services which are its subject, and the requirements of professional honesty and reliability of the economic operators which arise from that, that the commission of grave professional misconduct must result in the automatic rejection of the tender and the exclusion of the tenderer at fault, provided that the principle of proportionality is observed when the seriousness of that misconduct is assessed.

37 Such a clause, inserted into the contract documents in unambiguous terms ... enables all economic operators which are reasonably well informed exercising ordinary care to be apprised of the requirements of the contracting authority and the conditions of the contract so they may act accordingly (C-171/15, paras 36-37, emphasis added).

I find these passages, and in particular para 36, very confusing. It seems to indicate that the contracting authority, despite the discretion it has in deciding to include as applicable the ground of discretionary exclusion due to grave professional misconduct in the tender documentation or not, remains bound to ensure that 'the principle of proportionality is observed when the seriousness of that misconduct is assessed'. That would, in and of itself, exclude the possibility of predetermining that the exclusion on that ground will be absolute and not subjected to any further (substantive) assessment. Therefore, making this be followed by para 37, where the contrary underlying position exists in the determination that setting a clause of automatic exclusion in unambiguous terms provides tenderers with a clear view of the requirements, is at least disconcerting.

The ECJ then decided to follow very formalistic precedents whereby 'the contracting authority must comply strictly with the criteria which it has itself laid down (see, to that effect, judgment of 10 October 2013, Manova, C‑336/12, EU:C:2013:647, paragraph 40 and the case-law cited) in the light, in particular, of Annex VII A, paragraph 17, to Directive 2004/18' (C-171/15, para 38). It also added that, following its more recent Judgment in Pizzo, C‑27/15, EU:C:2016:404, 'the principle of equal treatment requires tenderers to be afforded equality of opportunity when formulating their tenders, which therefore implies that the bids of all tenderers must be subject to the same conditions' and that 'the obligation of transparency requires that all the conditions and detailed rules of the award procedure must be drawn up in a clear, precise and unequivocal manner in the contract notice or specifications so that, first, all reasonably informed tenderers exercising ordinary care can understand their exact significance and interpret them in the same way and, second, the contracting authority is able to ascertain whether the tenders submitted satisfy the criteria applying to the contract in question' (for discussion, see here).

On the basis of this, the ECJ creates an argument whereby tenderers from different Member States will be less likely to submit tenders when they are affected by an exclusion ground because they may not be aware of the possibility of their exclusion actually being subjected to a proportionality assessment despite the explicit terms of the tender documents, which the ECJ considers domestic tenders would do. From that, the ECJ concludes that 'the assessment of the exclusion at issue in the light of the principle of proportionality, where the tender conditions of the contract concerned provide for the rejection of tenders which are covered by such an exclusion clause without any assessment of that principle, is liable to place the economic operators concerned in an uncertain position and adversely affect the principle of equal treatment and compliance with the obligation of transparency' (see C-171/15, paras 41-43). Ultimately, then, the ECJ considers that the decision to subject the decision whether to exclude the tenderer to a proportionality assessment despite the explicit terms of the tender documents was contrary to EU public procurement law.

Critical remarks

I find the Connexxion Taxi Services Judgment very confusing because it seems to answer two interconnected questions about the relevance and effectiveness of the general principles of public procurement in an intrinsically contradictory manner, and it seems to me that the ECJ has taken another step down the formalist road. In the case at hand, and following the proposals of Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona (see here), I considered that it must be right that contracting authorities are always under a general obligation to act in a proportionate manner and, consequently, each decision they adopt needs to be proportionate under the circumstances and pro-competitive, and that ultimately 'a contracting authority must retain the power to assess, on a case-by-case basis, the gravity of the circumstances that would lead to exclusion of the tenderer. And ... it must also balance them against the effects that such exclusion would have on competition' [see A Sanchez-Graells, Public procurement and the EU competition rules, 2nd edn (Oxford, Hart, 2015) 293, references omitted].  

Despite the fact that the Connexxion Taxi Services Judgment sticks to the traditional formalist approach whereby the Court does not allow contracting authorities to deviate from the strictures of the published tender documentation, and this must at this stage not come as a surprise, the decision strikes as particularly odd because the ECJ does not seem to give much weight to the general principle of proportionality--either as enacted under the disputed Dutch rules, or more generally under the EU public procurement rules themselves--despite having accepted that the general principle can (and should?) control all procurement decisions. Remarkably, the ECJ deviated from the more progressive and flexible approach advanced by the AG and also created a strange focus of analysis by moving from the assessment of the decision of the contracting authority to the potential incentives of participation for non-domestic economic operators in a way that I also find very formalistic and potentially misguided.

Considering Connexxion Taxi Services, Manova and other precedents together, what seems clear is that contracting authorities can only reduce the scope of their discretion by self-imposed restrictions published in the tender documents. Thus, they would be better off by publishing bare bones tender documents and then exercising administrative discretion subject only to compliance with general principles of public procurement, as well as applicable domestic rules. However, this would fly on the face of Pizzo where the way the contracting authority justifies its decisions does not result immediately from the tender documents, which then gives contracting authorities the contrary incentive to reiterate all domestic rules in the tender documentation.

Other than contradictory, these sets of case law are also extremely formalistic and ultimately built on a non-functional obsession with the integration of the single market that can get on the way of the development of sound public procurement practice. Ultimately, the general principles of public procurement should be there to create sufficient checks and balances and, in their generality, they should rank higher than tender documents. Actually, it is not foreign to the ECJ case law to consider that tender requirements that are disproportionate or discriminatory cannot be included in the tender documentation (or need to be set aside, or ultimately determine the ineffectiveness of the procurement exercise). Thus, it would be desirable for that logical hierarchy to remain a constant, even if it means that cross-border participation in procurement processes does not come at zero transaction costs and that interested undertakings need to make themselves familiar with the domestic rules of the jurisdiction in which they are tendering.

Beyond that, it also seems to me that the ECJ is inadvertently creating an absolute need for an exclusion-related special procedural phase, where tenderers other than those affected by potential exclusion have a justiciable right to force the contracting authority to review the circumstances of other tenderers. This is not necessarily an overall undesirable development, but it can be problematic in many ways, not least because the EU substantive and procedural rules are not adapted to that function [see A Sanchez-Graells, “‘If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It'? EU Requirements of Administrative Oversight and Judicial Protection for Public Contracts”, in S Torricelli & F Folliot Lalliot (eds), Administrative oversight and judicial protection for public contracts (Larcier, 2017) forthcoming]. 

Last, but not least, it is also worth noting that, by answering in the way it has, the ECJ has avoided the need to provide clarification on the requirements of intensity of judicial review of public procurement decisions at Member State level, on which AG Campos Sánchez-Bordona had put together a rather stringent and not uncontroversial proposal (see here). Unfortunately, then, given the ECJ's unwillingness to answer that question, we will continue puzzledly looking at the gaping hole that Prof Caranta identified in the ECJ's jurisprudence concerning public procurement remedies [see R Caranta, 'Many Different Paths, but Are They All Leading to Effectiveness?', in S Treumer & F Lichère (eds), Enforcement of the EU Public Procurement Rules, vol 3 European Procurement Law Series (Copenhagen, DJØF Publishing, 2011) 53, 84].

AG delineates boundaries of administrative proportionality assessments and intensity of judicial review requirements under EU public procurement law (C-171/15)

In his Opinion of 30 June 2016 in Connexxion Taxi Services, C-171/15, EU:C:2016:506, Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona has addressed two important issues concerning the judicial review of a decision not to exclude an economic operator that had potentially incurred in serious professional misconduct despite the tender documentation indicating that 'A tender to which a ground for exclusion applies shall be set aside and shall not be eligible for further (substantive) assessment'.

The preliminary reference sent to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) mainly raises two issues: firstly, whether it was possible for the contracting authority to apply a proportionality assessment before proceeding to exclude the economic operator--or, in the circumstances of the case, in order to decide not to exclude. And, secondly, whether EU law precluded national courts from solely engaging in ‘marginal’ review as to whether the contracting authority could reasonably have come to the decision not to exclude a tenderer notwithstanding the fact that that it was guilty of grave professional misconduct, rather than carrying out an ‘unrestricted’ judicial review of the assessment conducted on the basis of the principle of proportionality. Both are interesting issues. Both were to be decided under the 2004 EU public procurement rules, but both are clearly relevant under the revised 2014 package.

Again on the interaction between general (administrative) law and tender documentation

The first issue fundamentally stems from the fact that applicable Dutch law and its interpretative guidance foresee that 'the assessment of whether a tenderer must actually be excluded, having regard to the general principles of Directive 2004/18, must always be proportional and be carried out in a non-discriminatory manner' (Opinion in C-171/15, para 10). In the Connexxion Taxi Services case, the contracting authority engaged in such proportionality assessment despite having published tender documentation that seemed to create an automatic obligation to exclude by stating that: 'A tender to which a ground for exclusion applies shall be set aside and shall not be eligible for further (substantive) assessment'. As a result of the proportionality analysis, it decided not to exclude a tenderer competing with Connexxion , according to which 'the contracting authority [was] not in a position to make an assessment of proportionality having found that the tenderer [had] been guilty of grave professional misconduct. That assessment [had] already been carried out by inclusion of the misconduct as a ground for exclusion in the descriptive document. Given the wording of the latter, it would be contrary to the principles of public access, transparency and equality in matters of administrative procurement for the contracting authority to have the power to assess the proportionality of the ground for exclusion.' (para 30). 

Somehow, this raises a question that can be seen as the mirror image of the controversy underlying the recent Pizzo Judgment (C-27/15, EU:C:2016:404, see comments here). In Pizzo, the contracting authority sought to rely on generally applicable administrative law rules to exclude economic operators. The CJEU ruled against that possibility and created a middle-path whereby a contracting authority seeking to engage in that exclusion would need to provide the tenderer an opportunity to regularise its position and comply with that general obligation within a period of time set by the contracting authority. Conversely, in Connexxion Taxi Services, the CJEU is expected to rule on whether reliance on generally applicable administrative law rules can be used to deactivate specific exclusion choices established in the tender documentation. AG Campos submits that the Court should answer in the affirmative and that this is not contrary to Pizzo. I agree.

In his Opinion, AG Campos stresses that

51. The requirement included in paragraph 3.1 of the descriptive document (‘a tender to which a ground for exclusion applies must be set aside’), precisely because of its quasi-regulatory nature, must, in my view, be read in the light of the interpretative rules applicable to all subordinate legal rules, which cannot disregard the more general rules which govern them. If the [applicable rule] provides that exclusion on the ground of grave professional misconduct requires that the contracting authority examine each particular case ‘on the basis of the nature and size of the public contract, the type and scope of the misconduct and the measures taken in the meantime by the undertaking’, the fact that the descriptive document is silent as to that necessary and individual application of the principle of proportionality cannot result in that principle being disregarded.

52. That approach is confirmed from the perspective of EU law. The case-law of the Court on the optional grounds for exclusion, rejecting their automatic application, confirms the need for that consistent interpretation. It follows from the judgment in Forposta and ABC Direct Contact that automatic exclusion (of a tenderer guilty of grave misconduct) could go beyond the discretion conferred on Member States by Article 45(2) of Directive 2004/18 (Opinion in C-171/15, paras 51-52, references omitted and emphasis added).

In my view, it must be right that contracting authorities are always under a general obligation of acting in a proportionate manner and, consequently, each decision they adopt needs to be proportionate under the circumstances and pro-competitive, and ultimately 'a contracting authority must retain the power to assess, on a case-by-case basis, the gravity of the circumstances that would lead to exclusion of the tenderer. And it is submitted that it must also balance them against the effects that such exclusion would have on competition' [see A Sanchez-Graells, Public procurement and the EU competition rules, 2nd edn (Oxford, Hart, 2015) 293, references omitted]. Thus, the final consideration of AG Campos seems entirely correct when he stresses that

In the invitation to tender at issue, the conditions and the selection procedure, the same for all applicants, were not modified. The contracting authority checked that their tenders satisfied the criteria applicable to the contract and applied no ground for exclusion which was not provided for in the descriptive document. The fact that, in order to assess one of those grounds for exclusion expressly included in that document it applied the criterion of proportionality, which was not expressly referred to in the descriptive document but is required by the general ... rules on public procurement (as well as by the case-law of the Court), is, in my view, consistent with the principle of equal treatment and its corollary, the obligation to act transparently (Opinion in C-171/15, para 58, references omitted and emphasis added).

The more difficult issue of the standard of (intensity) of judicial review

The second question fundamentally focuses on the fact that, given the contracting authority's engagement in a proportionality analysis, a mere 'marginal' review of the decision in order to ascertain whether the contracting authority could reasonably have come to the decision not to exclude a tenderer could fall short of meeting the requirements of the Remedies Directive.

After some interesting remarks on the gradual increase in the requirements of intensity of judicial review in areas of EU substantive law where there has been a harmonisation of remedies--which, consequently, reduce the scope of limitations derived from the general principle of procedural autonomy--AG Campos enounces what he considers should be covered by a mechanism of review compliant with the Remedies Directive. In his view,

the judicial review imposed by Directive 89/665 requires something more [than a mere 'marginal' review, or solely assessing whether or not the contested decision was arbitrary] to deserve that name. The assessment by the court cannot end with a mere assessment of the ‘reasonableness’ of the contested decisions, especially as those decisions must comply with detailed rules covering formal and substantive matters. A court hearing an application in this field will have to assess whether the disputed award observed the rules of the invitation to tender and whether the successful tenderer’s application can withstand the critical analysis which its competitors present in the action. That assessment will require, in many cases, verification of the decisive facts (which the administration may have determined incorrectly), as well as evidence concerning the relative merits of the various applications. It will also involve gauging whether the administrative action is duly reasoned and whether it is in line or at variance with the objectives which underlie it (in other words, whether there is evidence of misuse of powers) and the other legal provisions which govern it. Examination of all that evidence goes beyond, I repeat, a mere assessment of the ‘reasonableness’ of the contested measure and involves matters of fact and law of a more ‘technical’ and usually more complex nature, which every court having jurisdiction to review administrative acts usually carries out (Opinion in C-171/15, para 73, emphasis added). 

This leads him to suggest to the Court to declare that 

Articles 1 and 2 of Council Directive 89/665/EEC of 21 December 1989 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 are not compatible with legislation, or the usual practice, of a Member State which limits the scope of the review procedures to a review merely of the reasonableness of the decisions of contracting authorities (Opinion in C-171/15, para 85, emphasis added).

On principle, this seems unobjectionable and, as AG Campos suggests, it would also be compatible with the CJEU decision in Croce Amica One Italia (C-440/13, EU:C:2014:2435, see comment here), where it effectively clarified that

Article 1(1) of Directive 89/665 requires the decision of the contracting authority withdrawing the invitation to tender for a public contract to be open to a review procedure, and to be capable of being annulled, where appropriate, on the ground that it has infringed EU law on public contracts or national rules transposing that law (para 34).

The question is whether (all) the specific details of the full review advanced by AG Campos in para 73 of his Opinion are necessary in order to allow the review body or court to assess compatibility of procurement decisions with EU law and domestic transposing measures. As I read his Opinion, he advocates for three main components: (1) a review of the decisive facts, (2) a review of the relative merits of the offers, (3) a review of the reasons given by the contracting authority for its choices and the soundness of those reasons (or, in his own words, to check that there has been no misuse of powers). In my view, elements (1) and (3) are relatively uncontroversial. However, element (2) is very likely to create difficulties if the review body or court is expected (or empowered) to second guess the technical evaluation of the tenderers and their tenders. I think that the risk of allowing review courts and bodies to substitute the contracting authority's discretion for their own would be going a step too far. Thus, while the minimum requirements of the review procedures mandated by the Remedies Directive clearly seem to indicate the need to go beyond a mere assessment of arbitrariness and engage in a full review of legality, it also seems clear to me that the review cannot go as far as to allow for a second-guessing of the contracting authority's discretion. 

This is clearly an area where drawing bright lines is complicated or, as AG Fennelly put it writing extra judicially,

There remains a somewhat imprecise formulation of the standard of substantive review. Respect, to the extent appropriate, is paid to the discretion of the awarding authority. Nonetheless, the cases show that the intensity of scrutiny is greater than in traditional cases, where judges have been very slow to substitute their own evaluation of the facts for that of the decision-maker. In tendering, it is natural, other things being equal, to expect the contract to be awarded to the lowest price. Even where the criterion adopted is the “most economically advantageous,” there will usually be an identifiable lowest price. It will normally be incumbent on the authority to claim that other things are not equal and to show why. Thus, the substantial justification for the decision shades into the adequacy of the reasons, even if sufficiency of reasons is usually treated as a separate ground of judicial review (emphasis added). 

It may well be that this discussion is more about the semantics than substance of how to describe the standard for judicial review. Be it as it may, however, it will be interesting to await for the final decision of the Court in the Connexxion Taxi Services case, which hopefully will bring some clarity on the specific requirements of intensity of judicial review that stem from the Remedies Directive.