Sibelga announces a withdrawal for 1 September — too late: the Council of State suspends the security-services award anyway
G4S Secure Solutions challenged the award of Sibelga’s security framework agreement worth up to 16 million euros, which went to Protection Unit by a margin of 0.84 points; Sibelga acknowledged the reasoning defects and announced it would withdraw the decision, but scheduled its management committee only for 1 September 2026 — after the forty-five-day period in article 8 of the Law of 17 June 2013 — so the decision still existed on the day of the judgment and the Council of State suspended its execution under extreme urgency.
What happened?
On 4 December 2025 the management committee of Intercommunale Sibelga decided to launch a public contract for security services. The contract notice was published on 12 December 2025 in the Official Journal of the European Union under number 825929-2025 and in the Belgian Bulletin of Public Procurement. The contract, reference SIB25DS1401, was awarded through a negotiated procedure with prior call for competition in the special sectors and covered static guarding, mobile guarding, virtual patrol rounds, monitoring and alarm management, and post-alarm interventions for Sibelga’s operating sites and its gas and electricity supply points in the Brussels-Capital Region. It concerned a cascade framework agreement with the two highest-ranked bidders: the first becomes the active contractor, the second a reserve contractor who can be activated only if the first falls short. The initial term was four years, tacitly renewable four times for one year, with performance starting on 1 January 2027. The estimated value was 8,000,000 euros and the maximum value 16,000,000 euros. The specifications allocated one hundred points between price (50) and operational performance (50), the latter split into operational organisation (20), transition plan (10), reporting (10) and Business Recovery Plan (10). The lowest price received the maximum score, the other offers being assessed by linear interpolation. The qualitative sub-criteria were scored on a pre-announced scale of 0, 30, 50, 70 or 100 per cent, where 100 per cent stood for ‘mature, exceeds expectations, proven robustness and learning capacity, optimally aligned with the contract’. By the deadline of 3 June 2026 at 11.00 a.m., four offers were submitted through the e-Procurement platform. G4S Secure Solutions offered 768,356.28 euros, Protection Unit 763,203.24 euros — a difference of 5,153.04 euros. Both scored exactly the same 38 out of 50 on the full operational-performance criterion, so the final ranking turned entirely on the price criterion: a gap of 0.84 points. On 16 July 2026 the management committee adopted the reasoning and conclusions of the award file and assigned lot 1 in full to Protection Unit as active contractor; G4S was ranked as reserve contractor. Notification followed by letter of 17 July 2026. On 3 August 2026 G4S sought suspension under extreme urgency, raising four pleas. The first three all struck the same nerve: Sibelga had not applied its own assessment standard consistently and had not adequately reasoned it. In the first plea G4S pointed out that the mandatory transfer of staff under the sectoral collective agreement of 23 March 2017 was treated, in its case, as a ‘relevant uncertainty’ about the stability and composition of the team, while the same transfer was praised in Protection Unit’s case as a guarantee of knowledge retention and operational efficiency — even though that transfer applies by operation of law to both bidders once the conditions in the collective agreement are met. Both offers nonetheless ended up in the same 70 per cent category, worth 14 out of 20. The second plea concerned reporting: the technical specifications required a report to be sent to the designated mailing list within two hours of every intervention and every patrol round, and the decision itself found that Protection Unit did not expressly guarantee that deadline and offered no formal commitment or SLA — after which its offer was nevertheless held to meet the requirements ‘amply’ and placed in the 70 per cent category. The third plea concerned the Business Recovery Plan: for the temporary extension of the scope with additional static guarding or patrol rounds, the technical specifications imposed a Recovery Time Objective of four hours, whereas the decision recorded a ‘deployment within 4 to 8 hours’ for Protection Unit and yet assessed its plan as optimally aligned, worth the maximum 10 out of 10 against 7 out of 10 for G4S. G4S calculated that at 70 per cent on that sub-criterion Protection Unit would total 85 points, against its own 87.16 — enough to reverse the ranking. Sibelga filed no observations and no administrative file. By letter of 12 August 2026 its counsel stated that, having analysed the application, their client had decided to withdraw the contested award and that the management committee would meet for that purpose on 1 September 2026. Asked by the auditorate to clarify, it replied by email of 21 August 2026 that the withdrawal was being made ‘because of the reasoning problems raised in the first 3 pleas of the application’; at the hearing of 25 August 2026 it acknowledged and confirmed those reasoning problems once more. The Council of State countered that 1 September 2026 falls after the forty-five-day period referred to in article 8, § 2, second paragraph, 3°, of the Law of 17 June 2013, and that on the day of the judgment the decision had still not been withdrawn. The first three pleas were therefore found serious to the extent indicated; since they sufficed, the seriousness of the fourth did not need to be assessed. Councillor of State Frédéric Vanneste, acting president of the XIIth vacation chamber, ordered on 27 August 2026 the suspension of execution under extreme urgency. First auditor Thomas Maes had given a concurring opinion. Costs, including the procedural indemnity claimed, were not yet decided: in view of the granted application and the further proceedings still required, they are held in abeyance.
Why does this matter?
Two things make this judgment useful. The first is the timing of the withdrawal. An authority that, on reading the application, sees that its reasoning will not hold may withdraw its decision and thereby render the action without object — a common and legitimate exit, whose consequences the Council has mapped out neatly in other cases. But an announced withdrawal is not a withdrawn decision. Sibelga put its management committee on the agenda for 1 September 2026, beyond the forty-five-day period in article 8, § 2, second paragraph, 3°, of the Law of 17 June 2013, and on the day of the judgment the contested decision still existed. The Council therefore had to rule, and did. Anyone using withdrawal as an exit must achieve it within the period that counts — not at the next meeting that fits the diary. The second is how little was needed for the pleas to be found serious. The Council did not have to dissect the scoring itself: the authority’s own acknowledgement, first in an email to the auditorate and then at the hearing, sufficed. That exposes how fragile an award decision is when the same objective circumstance is read as a risk for one bidder and a strength for another, or when an offer that does not pin down an express requirement of the specifications — a report within two hours, a Recovery Time Objective of four hours — still lands in the top scoring category. With a final gap of 0.84 points out of one hundred, such a reasoning defect is not academic: it is precisely large enough to reverse the ranking.
The lesson
As an unsuccessful bidder, read the award decision not only for its outcome but for its internal consistency. Is the same objective fact — a statutory transfer of staff, a sectoral collective agreement, an obligation that applies to everyone — read as a risk in your case and an asset in your competitor’s, without the decision identifying the concrete difference in the offers that supports it? Does an offer receive the maximum score while the decision itself records that an express requirement of the specifications is not guaranteed? Then do the arithmetic: if a lower score for your competitor would place you above them, your interest is concrete and your plea serious. Here 0.84 points was enough. As a contracting authority, there are two lessons. First, respect your own assessment scale. If you reserve 100 per cent for ‘mature, exceeds expectations, optimally aligned with the contract’, you can hardly award that score to a plan that may double the imposed deadline, without explaining why it is nevertheless optimal. Second, if you decide to withdraw, schedule the withdrawal within the period of article 8, § 2, of the Law of 17 June 2013 and test your decision-making body’s date against it. A letter announcing a withdrawal does not stop a suspension — and you end up with a suspended decision and a self-acknowledged reasoning defect on the file.
Ask yourself
Have you checked whether the award decision values the same objective circumstance identically for all bidders, and if not, whether it explains which concrete difference apparent from the offers supports that divergent assessment? Have you calculated, sub-criterion by sub-criterion, what point difference would reverse the ranking, and whether that difference is within reach? Can you point to where the decision itself records a shortcoming in the successful bidder and nonetheless settles on the highest scoring category? And as an authority: when deciding to withdraw, have you tested the meeting date of your decision-making body against the period in article 8, § 2, second paragraph, 3°, of the Law of 17 June 2013 rather than against your meeting calendar?
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The Council of State (Raad van State / Conseil d'État) is Belgium's supreme administrative court. In disputes over public procurement — from contract awards to tenderer exclusions — the Council of State is the final arbiter. The rulings in this database are summarised by TenderWolf in plain language, with practical lessons for tenderers and contracting authorities. View all rulings →