Award criteria
Award criteria determine which tender scores best. They must be published in advance, relate to the subject of the contract and be objectively assessable. The evaluation method and weighting must be transparent and consistent.
A concession bid of 99.8% — and nobody checked whether it was calculated on the same basis as the competitors
The Council of State suspends the award of the parking concession of the city of Ath because the winner calculated its royalty percentage on costs including VAT, while the competitors did so on costs excluding VAT — two incomparable bases for the same award criterion.
A signed contract does not protect your award — the contracting authority can still withdraw it up to 60 days later
The Council of State dismisses the extreme-urgency appeal of a contractor whose award was withdrawn after the contracting authority discovered that the engineering office had wrongly scored a bid, and confirms that the classical withdrawal doctrine applies — even when the contract has already been signed.
An ordinal scale with scores to two decimal places: here 'intermediate values allowed' becomes a smokescreen for undisclosed sub-sub-criteria
Zorgbedrijf Antwerpen scores bids for a Menu Management System on an ordinal 50/55/70/85/100% scale with 'intermediate values allowed', but the evaluation report produces scores to the hundredth — which can only be explained by a hidden split into sub-sub-award criteria that appears nowhere in the specifications.
Incumbent scores 18/20 on 'creativity', challenger 8/20 — yet no unfair advantage, says Council of State
The Council of State holds that a 10-point gap on 20 for 'creativity and originality' between the incumbent service provider and the challenger is not unlawful, because the tender documents explicitly asked for a moodboard 'based on the current magazine' and the existing publication was publicly available online to all bidders.
Explaining your own scoring formula in the response brief is too late — the award is annulled
The Council of State annuls the concession for three LED information boards in Kontich because the municipality only managed to explain what its own screen-time scoring formula meant during the proceedings — and because the 'Tmax = 16' used in the formula did not match the 15-point maximum score stated in the guidelines.
Bidder's experience as an award criterion: the Flemish Mobility department trips over the selection/award distinction
The Council of State suspends the award of a framework agreement for project preparation along waterways because the second award criterion effectively assessed the bidder's experience — a classic selection criterion — rather than the intrinsic value of the offer.
Solar panels on 72 social housing units: Council of State suspends award because contracting authority blindly accepted a 7-day execution deadline
The Council of State suspends the award of a REPOWER EU contract for solar panels on 72 social housing units in Grâce-Hollogne, because the contracting authority accepted a 7-working-day execution deadline without verifying whether that deadline was realistic for the full scope of work — not just panel installation, but also wiring, inspections, safety lines, and as-built documentation.
Didn't reach the minimum score? Then your tender isn't 'irregular' — it's just not good enough, and that's a different story
The Council of State rejects the claim of a training company against NMBS, because the company scored below the required 70% on both quality sub-criteria and then incorrectly argued that this constituted an irregularity assessment — when it was in fact a substantive evaluation against the award criteria.
A scoring scale from 'weak' to 'excellent' without further explanation — prima facie transparent enough
The Council of State rejects the suspension request of a postal services company challenging the award of a framework agreement, ruling that a qualitative evaluation method with an ordinal scale (weak/moderate/good/very good/excellent) is sufficiently transparent when the specifications contain evaluation elements and technical provisions that define the framework.
Fail to correct the same errors through three offer rounds? The authority doesn't have to give you a fourth chance
The Council of State rejects the claim by Sopra Steria and IDEMIA against their exclusion from an €80 million contract for a biometric identification system for the police, because they kept repeating the same irregularities after three offer rounds and repeated regularization requests.
Agence du Numérique evalueerde cybersecurity-services zonder transparante gunningsmethodologie
Schorsing was gerechtvaardigd omdat de methode voor evaluatie van de cyberincident-responders ondoorzichtig was en verschillende inschrijvers niet gelijk werden behandeld.
Retractatie van eerste gunning voor elektrische bussen zonder juridische grondslag
De voorzitter gelastte schorsing omdat de OTW zonder rechtmatige grondslag de eerste gunningsbeslissing introk en vervolgens een andere kandidaat aanwees, in strijd met het beginsel van rechtzekerheid en non-arbitrariteit.
20 points for 2% of the contract value: how a skewed scoring system and exclusive negotiations sank a €6 million vaccination security contract
The Council of State annuls the award of all nine lots of a security contract for Walloon vaccination centres to Securitas, because the Walloon health agency negotiated exclusively with Securitas and used an absurdly disproportionate scoring system where a €10,000 post carried half the weight of a €6 million post.
One-hour emergency response for Christmas lights in Jette — but the authority forgot to check if that was realistic
The Council of State suspends the award of a holiday illumination contract in Jette because the authority failed to verify whether the one-hour intervention time offered by two tenderers was realistic, despite multiple red flags — including the fact that the offer was submitted by a different legal entity than the one to whom the contract was awarded.
Solar panels on the UZ Gent parking structure — no unlimited freedom of choice when the specifications contain a formula
The Council of State rejects the claim of a solar panel company challenging the award of an installation contract, ruling that a price criterion based on the total bill of quantities creates no unlimited freedom of choice, and that an annual yield criterion with mandatory PVsyst simulation provides prima facie objective verification.
Authority may not deviate from interpretation used by its mandatary during negotiations
When a mandated entity applies a particular interpretation of tender conditions during negotiations, the contracting authority may not depart from it in the award decision without giving candidates the opportunity to submit a new offer.
With only two tenders, one is not a benchmark for the other — and an 'expectation' in the specifications is not an essential minimum requirement
The Council rejects three grounds: a large price difference on one item does not suffice to establish an abnormal price when the authority conducted a substantiated general price investigation, specifying that one 'expects' something to be fully digital is not a pass/fail minimum requirement, and selective criticism of sub-elements of the reasoning does not undermine a global assessment.
A 134-seat planetarium scores the same as a 156-seat one — while the specifications ask for 150
The Council of State annuls the award of an architecture contract for a planetarium because the authority gave the same score to a 134-seat reference and a 156-seat reference for the sub-sub-criterion 'up to 150 seats', without motivation — and a post-hoc rule-of-three calculation cannot serve as justification.
In a global qualitative assessment, isolated sub-elements don't count separately — and a concise selection report suffices when no issues arise
The Council rejects both grounds: criticizing a few sub-elements is insufficient to undermine a global qualitative assessment, and the contracting authority need not set out the selection examination in extenso when no problems arise.
Suspension of award of framework agreement for housing restoration – contracting authority valued prior references and certificates of the chosen tenderer under quality criterion while specifications only provided for 'means for optimal execution' as award criterion, in violation of Article 81 of the 2016 Act and transparency principle
The Council of State suspended under extreme urgency the award by SRL Sambre & Biesme of a works framework agreement (restoration of occupied and unoccupied dwellings) to SA SOTRELCO, because the contracting authority in assessing the second award criterion (quality, 30%) had valued SOTRELCO's prior references and certificates of satisfactory execution, while this information did not correspond to the 'means to be deployed for optimal execution' as described in the specifications — tenderers could not understand from the specifications that their prior achievements, which typically belong to qualitative selection, would be taken into account under this award criterion.
Dropping mandatory options after the BAFO without warning — and reversing the ranking
The Council of State suspends the award of a renovation contract because the CPAS dropped mandatory options (triple glazing, ecological materials, single-flux ventilation) after receiving BAFOs without informing tenderers during negotiations, thereby reversing the ranking to the detriment of the applicant.
Suspension application under extreme urgency by ASFALYS-KPMG consortium against award of ICT services lot 1 to Deloitte rejected – single ground regarding self-assessment system for quality criterion not serious: criticism too vague and theoretical, complaints partly late, waiver of verification obligation not established
The Council of State rejected the suspension application under extreme urgency by the ASFALYS-KPMG consortium against the award by the Prime Minister of lot 1 of a public service contract for specialised ICT services (IT23001, service integration and management) to Deloitte Consulting & Advisory, because the single ground was not serious: the criticism of the self-assessment system for the quality criterion — where tender conformity was evaluated based on questionnaires completed by the tenderers themselves — was too vague and theoretical as the applicants failed to identify concretely which sub-criteria led to a manifest error of assessment, the complaints raised at the hearing regarding scores were late, and the postulate that the contracting authority had waived its verification obligation could not be established.
Een bestek dat monopolietaken van gerechtsdeurwaarders opneemt in het prijscriterium is fundamenteel onwettig — en een bevraging achteraf kan dat gebrek niet verhelpen
De Raad van State vernietigt de gunning van een opdracht voor debiteurenbeheer via een gerechtsdeurwaarder, omdat het bestek de monopoliebevoegdheden van gerechtsdeurwaarders — waarvoor wettelijk vastgestelde tarieven gelden die niet aan prijsconcurrentie mogen worden onderworpen — opnam in de inventaris die diende als basis voor het gunningscriterium prijs, en de aanbestedende overheid bij de beoordeling van dat criterium vervolgens afweek van het bestek door de inventarisprijzen te vervangen door het resultaat van een informele bevraging over de 'minnelijke fase' — een begrip dat niet in het bestek voorkwam — waardoor de inschrijvers bij het opstellen van hun offerte niet konden voorzien hoe het prijscriterium zou worden beoordeeld.
De aanwijzing van een voorkeurbieder in een onderhandelingsprocedure voor treinstellen van 3,3 miljard euro doorstaat de toets — ook al scoort de goedkoopste inschrijver technisch lager en ook al is de beoordelingsmethode pas na opening van de offertes uitgewerkt
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering tot schorsing bij uiterst dringende noodzakelijkheid van de tweede gunningsbeslissing voor een raamovereenkomst voor de levering van elektrische en batterijelektrische treinstellen (AM30) ter waarde van meer dan 3,3 miljard euro, omdat (1) de aanbestedende overheid na een eerdere succesvolle schorsing de motivering van het technisch criterium afdoende heeft verbeterd, (2) de beoordelingsmethode — een plus/min-waardensysteem voor het technisch criterium — niet vooraf in de opdrachtdocumenten hoefde te worden aangekondigd, mits zij coherent is en de gunningscriteria niet denatureert (toepassing TNS Dimarso), (3) de keuze om na vier onderhandelingsrondes over te gaan tot aanwijzing van een voorkeurbieder in plaats van een vijfde onderhandelingsronde niet kennelijk onredelijk is, (4) de beweerde specifieke beoordelingsfouten bij de technische, contractuele en energiecriteria het puntenverschil niet overbruggen, en (5) het argument dat de aanbestedende overheid de uitsluitingsgronden had moeten onderzoeken wegens de activiteiten van de gekozen inschrijver in bezet Palestijns gebied prematuur is, nu de bestreden beslissing slechts een voorkeurbieder aanwijst en geen definitieve gunning inhoudt.
De beoordelingsmethode voor gunningscriteria hoeft niet vooraf te worden bekendgemaakt — en een beschrijvende beoordelingsschaal met vijf niveaus is niet onregelmatig
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering tot schorsing van de gunning van een overheidsopdracht voor werken (renovatie industrieel gebouw en aanleg bedrijvenpark), omdat (1) de beoordelingsmethode — een beschrijvende vijfpuntenschaal — niet vooraf in de opdrachtdocumenten hoefde te worden aangekondigd, mits zij coherent is, de gunningscriteria niet denatureert en geen discriminerend effect heeft (bevestiging van het TNS Dimarso-arrest), (2) de aanbestedende overheid de planningen van de inschrijvers mocht corrigeren om de vergelijkbaarheid te waarborgen door de startdatum te verschuiven naar het moment waarop daadwerkelijk op de werf wordt gewerkt, (3) het aspect 'organisatie' — waaronder het beheer van hinder in een stedelijke omgeving — duidelijk in het bestek was aangekondigd als beoordelingselement, en de inschrijver dit in haar offerte niet had behandeld, en (4) de aanbestedende overheid niet verplicht was om de inschrijver te vragen haar offerte op dit punt aan te vullen — dat zou een substantiële verbetering zijn geweest die het gelijkheidsbeginsel zou schenden.
Bij een globale beoordeling van technische waarde mag de aanbestedende overheid de vastgestelde meer- en minwaarden cijfermatig vertalen naar een score — en na vier offerterondes mag zij een voorkeursbieder aanwijzen zonder verder te onderhandelen
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering tot schorsing van de aanwijzing van CAF als voorkeursbieder voor de NMBS-raamovereenkomst voor nieuwe treinstellen (AM30), omdat (1) de beoordelingsmethode voor het criterium 'Technische waarde' — een beginscore van 18/36 met bijstelling van 0,1 punt per vastgestelde meer- of minwaarde — zich inpaste in de vooraf aangekondigde globale beoordeling en geen nieuw systeem was maar een nadere invulling na het eerdere schorsingsarrest, (2) de beoordelingselementen niet als subgunningscriteria waren gehanteerd omdat zij niet elk afzonderlijk waren gewogen, (3) de NMBS na vier offerterondes over twee jaar mocht beslissen een voorkeursbieder aan te wijzen in plaats van verder te onderhandelen, nu zij aannemelijk maakte dat verdere rondes ernstige negatieve gevolgen zouden hebben (70-100 miljoen euro OPEX-kosten, vertraging tot na 2030) terwijl het onzeker was of de offertes nog konden verbeteren, en (4) een nieuw middel dat pas op de dag van de terechtzitting schriftelijk werd ingediend, niet-ontvankelijk was wegens schending van de loyale procesvoering — ook al werd het aangebracht als middel van openbare orde.
Een beschrijvende evaluatie met globale quotering is een voorzienbare beoordelingsmethodiek voor kwalitatieve gunningscriteria — en wie zijn plan van aanpak baseert op een loutere overname van de standaardleidraad, kan niet verwachten dat de aanbestedende overheid daarin een meerwaarde leest
De Raad van State verwerpt het vernietigingsberoep tegen de gunning van een dienstenopdracht voor explosievenopsporing, omdat (1) het gebruik van een logaritmische prijsformule in plaats van de drieregel geen onwettigheid oplevert zolang een lagere prijs tot een hogere score leidt, (2) een beschrijvende evaluatie van kwalitatieve gunningscriteria met globale quotering een voorzienbare beoordelingsmethodiek is die niet vooraf aan de inschrijvers moet worden bekendgemaakt, en (3) de inschrijver die voor zijn plan van aanpak grotendeels de standaardleidraad overneemt — terwijl het bestek uitdrukkelijk vereist dat de inschrijver die leidraad overstijgt — niet aantoont dat de lage score op onjuiste feiten berust door louter de inhoud van zijn eigen offerte te herhalen.
De correlatie tussen de aangeboden prijs en de diepgang van het plan van aanpak mag worden betrokken bij de kwalitatieve beoordeling — en het niet-abnormaal bevinden van de prijs staat daar niet aan in de weg
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering tot schorsing van de gunning van een studieopdracht voor walstroom in een zeehaven, omdat (1) de aanbestedende overheid uit de correlatie tussen de lage prijs en het voorgestelde plan van aanpak mocht afleiden dat de studie met onvoldoende diepgang zou worden aangepakt — zonder daarmee de autonomie van de gunningscriteria te schenden — en (2) de vaststelling dat de prijs niet abnormaal is, niet tegenstrijdig is met de vaststelling dat het plan van aanpak onvoldoende diepgang vertoont: de prijs was normaal voor de voorgestelde aanpak, maar de aanpak zelf was ontoereikend.
Wanneer de aanbestedende overheid zelf vaststelt dat de totaalprijs van de gekozen inschrijver meer dan 43 procent onder het gemiddelde ligt en dit in het rood markeert, maar nalaat die totaalprijs nader te onderzoeken, is het prijsonderzoek onzorgvuldig
De Raad van State schorst de gunning van perceel 3 (Operations) van een raamovereenkomst voor gespecialiseerde ICT-diensten, omdat de aanbestedende overheid weliswaar een prijsonderzoek heeft gevoerd naar enkele specifieke posten, maar heeft nagelaten het mogelijks abnormaal karakter van de totaalprijs van de gekozen inschrijver te onderzoeken — ondanks een door haarzelf vastgestelde afwijking van -43,22 procent ten opzichte van het gemiddelde —, en omdat de beoordeling van de prijsverantwoording niet meer bevatte dan een samenvatting van de door de inschrijver aangedragen redenen zonder enig spoor van een eigen inhoudelijke toetsing aan de opdrachtvoorwaarden.
Een kwalitatieve beoordeling waarbij dezelfde elementen uit een offerte bij meerdere gunningscriteria als min- of pluspunt worden meegenomen is niet onwettig, zolang de beoordeling telkens vanuit een ander kader en een andere invalshoek gebeurt
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering tot schorsing van de gunning van een raamovereenkomst voor visuele en verbale branding van de Stad Brugge, omdat de verzoeker niet aannemelijk maakt dat het ontbreken van een vooraf bekendgemaakte beoordelingsmethodiek onwettig is wanneer de evaluatie op een voor de hand liggende manier besloten lag in de omschrijving van de gunningscriteria, en omdat het meenemen van dezelfde offerteaspecten bij meerdere gunningscriteria geen verboden dubbele beoordeling uitmaakt wanneer de beoordeling telkens vanuit een andere invalshoek gebeurt.
Adding up fee percentages as if they were euro amounts and then calling eight out of ten items 'negligible' — while each item accounts for 10% of the price criterion
The Council of State suspends the award of a framework contract for designers because the municipality of Evergem treated fee percentages as absolute amounts in its price investigation, and labelled eight of ten items as negligible while each represented a sub-award criterion worth 7 out of 70 points.
AV infrastructure for training centre PLOT: suspicions about technical compliance are not enough without proof
The Council of State rejects an AV supplier's challenge against the award of a contract for audiovisual infrastructure in a provincial training building, finding that an alleged notification defect does not affect the award decision's legality, the technical assessment motivation is adequate, and challenging the certification criterion is inadmissible due to lack of interest given a score difference of only 1.5 out of 100.
Event expert culture EventFlanders: references as assessment element within quality award criterion and score reduction after interview
The Council of State rejects a challenge against the award of a consultancy contract for a culture event expert at EventFlanders, because the specifications treat references not as an independent sub-criterion but as an assessment element for evaluating the proposed individual's experience, and because the authority was not required to further assess the applicant's references after the interview revealed the proposed expert could not clarify his specific role in those references.
Hockey field conversion Evere: comment in offer about connecting to existing pipes does not render offer irregular when unit price covers full replacement
The Council of State rejects a challenge against the award of works for converting a hockey field in Evere, because the chosen tenderer's comment that sprinkler cannons would be connected to existing pipes does not render the offer substantially irregular — the unit price is comparable to other tenderers and covers full replacement, and the final execution method will be decided during works after inspection of the existing system.
DIFTAR software IVIO: suspension due to invalid declaration of substantial irregularity of offer with zero prices for required options
The Council of State suspends the award of a public contract for DIFTAR software because the declaration of substantial irregularity of the applicant's offer — which quoted zero prices for five required options — is not properly motivated: the offer does contain a description of the options, the zero price constitutes a valid price commitment, and the comparability of offers is not affected since the total price is the sole award criterion.
Een gunningscriterium dat het verschil in RIZIV-terugbetaling tussen biosimilairen en een origineel geneesmiddel verrekent in de 'nettokost voor het ziekenhuis' kan de mededinging vervalsen en het gelijkheidsbeginsel schenden — ook al identificeert het de economisch voordeligste offerte voor het ziekenhuis
De Raad van State schorst de gunning van een raamovereenkomst voor de levering van groeifactoren (G-CSF) aan ziekenhuizen, omdat het gunningscriterium 'nettokost voor het ziekenhuis' — dat de RIZIV-terugbetaling verrekent in de prijsscore — een structureel concurrentievoordeel van 209,88 euro toekent aan de enige producent van het originele geneesmiddel Lonquex (lipegfilgrastim), waardoor producenten van biosimilairen op basis van pegfilgrastim feitelijk niet kunnen mededingen, zelfs niet met een nulprijs.
Taxi transport for wheelchair users FEDASIL: suspension due to insufficiently precise inventory items enabling price speculation
The Council of State suspends the award of a public contract for taxi and wheelchair transport from the Grimbergen reception centre, because two inventory items — 'WHEELCHAIR TRANSPORT' without any destination indication and 'transfer to other centres (e.g. Jabbeke)' with an unjustified average distance of 60 km — were insufficiently precise to exclude price speculation, violating the transparency principle and the requirement of genuine competition.
Een vernietiging op vordering van een andere inschrijver doet het beroep tot nietigverklaring zijn voorwerp verliezen, maar niet de vordering tot schadevergoeding tot herstel — waarvoor de middelen alsnog moeten worden onderzocht
De Raad van State stelt vast dat het beroep tot nietigverklaring van de gunning van een opdracht voor gerechtsdeurwaarderdiensten voor de stad Fontaine-l'Évêque zijn voorwerp heeft verloren doordat dezelfde beslissing reeds is vernietigd in een parallel beroep van een andere inschrijver (arrest nr. 262.783), maar heropent de debatten en verwijst de zaak naar de gewone procedure om de middelen alsnog te onderzoeken in het licht van de vordering tot schadevergoeding tot herstel die de verzoekers nadien hebben ingesteld.
Framework agreement for public cloud Copernicus data: competitive advantage from prior involvement in earth observation programme is legitimate
The Council of State rejects a cloud service provider's challenge against the award of an IaaS framework agreement for Copernicus earth observation data, finding that the winning tenderer's competitive advantage — having the data already available on its cloud through involvement in the Copernicus programme — is legitimate, the price investigation for intellectual services with wide price margins was diligent, and the lower technical quality score was attributable to the applicant's own failure to provide concrete information on scalability and data capacity.
Wie een prijsformule in het bestek opneemt die niet werkt bij een nulprijs, kan die formule niet omzeilen door beide offertes het maximum te geven — en de onmogelijkheid om de formule toe te passen ontslaat de overheid niet van haar wettelijke verplichtingen
De Raad van State schorst de gunning van een raamovereenkomst voor maaltijdcheques en geschenkcheques voor het personeel van Actiris, omdat de aanbestedende overheid de prijsformule uit het bestek niet kon toepassen wegens een nulprijs in een van de offertes en vervolgens aan beide offertes het maximum van 35 punten toekende — waardoor twee offertes met een verschillende prijs gelijk werden behandeld en het prijscriterium werd uitgehold, in strijd met het gelijkheidsbeginsel en het transparantiebeginsel.
Een beschrijvende opsomming van de inhoud van offertes is geen evaluatie — de motivering moet uitleggen waarom de ene offerte beter scoort dan de andere
De Raad van State schorst de gunning van een raamovereenkomst voor fietsleasing voor het personeel van Vivalia, omdat het gunningsverslag zich voor het criterium dienst na verkoop beperkte tot een beschrijvende opsomming van wat elke offerte bevatte, zonder te evalueren waarom de ene offerte beter scoorde dan de andere — terwijl de offerte van de verzoeker op bepaalde punten ruimere diensten aanbood dan die van de gekozen inschrijver.
Gunningscriteria die kortere uitvoeringstermijnen belonen, zijn geen vrijbrief om minimale veiligheidseisen in het bestek naast je neer te leggen
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering van de tweede geweerde inschrijver tegen dezelfde gunning voor asbestverwijdering in tunnel 't Zand, en bevestigt dat de eis om het rijden naast een hermetische zone zoveel mogelijk te beperken een minimale bestekeis is — ook al creëren de gunningscriteria voor uitvoeringstermijn en beperking van tunnelsluiting een stimulans om het verkeer zo lang mogelijk open te houden.
Beoordelingselementen bij een gunningscriterium zijn geen subgunningscriteria — ze vragen geen afzonderlijke motivering per onderdeel, en de motivering moet in haar geheel worden gelezen
De Raad van State verwerpt — tegen het andersluidend advies van de auditeur in — de vordering tegen de gunning van scenografische werken voor het MAP-Mercator museum in Sint-Niklaas, omdat de beoordelingselementen bij het kwaliteitscriterium (esthetiek, technieken, draagkracht, opbouw, duurzaamheid) geen subgunningscriteria zijn die elk een afzonderlijke motivering of quotering vereisen, het gebruik van het woord 'goed' in de motivering een globale score van 'zeer goed' niet uitsluit, en een vintage stijl die uit de bijgevoegde ontwerpschetsen kon worden afgeleid een legitiem referentiekader voor de esthetische beoordeling vormde.
Een nulprijs voor een post die een afzonderlijk subgunningscriterium vormt, is substantieel onregelmatig wanneer de kosten in werkelijkheid naar een andere post zijn verschoven
De Raad van State vernietigt de gunning van een opdracht voor videobelsoftware voor de 112-noodcentrale en brandweerdispatching, omdat de gekozen inschrijver een nulprijs opgaf voor de post implementatie — een afzonderlijk subgunningscriterium — terwijl uit zijn eigen offerte bleek dat hij daar wel degelijk prestaties voor moest leveren, waardoor de kosten ten onrechte naar het andere subgunningscriterium waren verschoven en de vergelijkbaarheid van de offertes was verhinderd.
Inadequate motivation of sub-criteria is insufficient when the points gap is too large to affect the outcome
The Council of State rejects an IT training company's challenge against the award of a framework agreement for IT training services (game design, motion design, compositing VFX), holding that while some sub-criteria were inadequately motivated, the affected points were too few to bridge the gap with the threshold or the first-ranked tenderer, the criticism of trainer qualifications was unsubstantiated, and inviting only one tenderer for a price-only BAFO did not violate the equality principle since the applicant already had the lowest price.
Een louter beschrijvende beoordeling van offertes volstaat niet — de motivering moet voor elk beoordelingselement uit het bestek aangeven of en waarom een offerte beter of minder goed scoort
De Raad van State schorst voor de tweede maal de gunning van een architectuuropdracht voor 45 studentenwoningen in Doornik, omdat het nieuwe gunningsverslag — opgesteld na een eerste schorsingsarrest wegens motiveringsgebreken — opnieuw faalde in de formele motivering: de beoordeling van de offertes was louter beschrijvend zonder aan te geven of elementen positief of negatief werden gewaardeerd, gebruikte niet dezelfde beoordelingselementen voor elke offerte, en behandelde niet alle in het bestek aangekondigde beoordelingselementen voor het tweede criterium.
Een vordering bij uiterst dringende noodzakelijkheid vereist minstens één ernstig middel — feitelijke grieven zonder verwijzing naar een geschonden rechtsregel volstaan niet
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering van een Duitse GmbH tegen de gunning van een opdracht voor containers met chips voor de regio IMOG als niet-ontvankelijk, omdat het verzoekschrift geen ernstig middel bevatte: de verzoekende partij klaagde over een 'gebrekkige' en 'niet-transparante' beoordeling en over 'misbruik van discretionaire bevoegdheid', maar gaf nergens aan welke concrete rechtsregel was geschonden en hoe — en het komt niet aan het auditoraat of de Raad van State toe om in de plaats van de verzoekende partij het middel te formuleren.
Technisch complexe gunningscriteria vereisen een correct begrip van de onderliggende normen — verwarring tussen typegoedkeuring en individuele kalibratie leidt tot een ongegrond middel
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering tot schorsing van de gunning van een opdracht voor 33 fijnstofmonitoren PM10/PM2,5 aan NV E., omdat de verzoekende partij ten onrechte het glijdend gemiddelde van 900 seconden gelijkstelde met de temporele resolutie van de monitor — terwijl de begunstigde wel degelijk beschikte over een meetresolutie van 1 seconde en 1 minuut — en ten onrechte de kalibratievereisten van hoofdstuk 7 van EN 16450:2017 (typegoedkeuring) transponeerde naar punt 8.4.10 (individuele kalibratie), terwijl de monitor van de begunstigde beschikte over een ingebouwde kalibratietool die door de norm werd erkend.
Beoordelingsmethode NMBS-treincontract geschorst: verband tussen kwalitatieve labels en punten is onbegrijpelijk
De Raad van State schorst de aanwijzing van CAF als preferentiële inschrijver voor het AM30-raamakkoord van de NMBS (tot 4,66 miljard euro voor elektrische treinstellen), omdat de beoordelingsmethode voor het criterium 'technische waarde' niet toeliet te begrijpen hoe de generieke kwalitatieve labels en de vastgestelde meer- en minwaarden zich vertaalden in de toegekende puntenscores.
Kwaliteitsdoelstellingen per stuk beoordelen en scoren is geen ongeoorloofd gebruik van subgunningscriteria
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering tegen de gunning van een raamovereenkomst voor warme drankautomaten omdat het systematisch beoordelen en scoren van elk van de in het bestek aangekondigde kwaliteitsdoelstellingen geen ongeoorloofde subgunningscriteria creëert, maar slechts de aangekondigde beoordelingsmethodiek van plus- en minpunten toepast.
Een minimumeis als 'te ontwikkelen' aanbieden is geen onregelmatigheid als het bestek die antwoordmogelijkheid voorziet
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering tegen de gunning van een SaaS-opdracht omdat het bestek uitdrukkelijk toeliet dat inschrijvers minimumeisen als 'te ontwikkelen' aanboden — mits concrete beschrijving van de manier en het tijdsbestek — en omdat de aanbestedende overheid die aanpak ook bij de beoordeling op haar inhoudelijke merites mocht waarderen.
Een 'externe expert' in het beoordelingscomité mag niet dezelfde persoon zijn als de projectbegeleider die het comité voorzit
De Raad van State schorst een gunningsbeslissing omdat de aanbestedende overheid het beoordelingscomité samenstelde met de assistent aan de bouwheer als 'externe expert', terwijl het bestek die twee functies als afzonderlijke rollen had omschreven.
Een gunningscriterium dat inschrijvers dwingt tot gissen, schendt het gelijkheidsbeginsel — ook buiten de wet overheidsopdrachten
De Raad van State vernietigt de gunning van een opdracht voor gerechtsdeurwaardersdiensten omdat het enige gunningscriterium — de signeringstermijn — onvoldoende informatie gaf over het aantal gelijktijdig te behandelen dwangbevelen, waardoor inschrijvers hun offerte op vermoedens moesten baseren.
Punten aftrekken voor informatie die het bestek niet vroeg, is een onangekondigd subcriterium
De Raad van State vernietigt de gunning van HVAC-werken aan een zwembad omdat de aanbestedende overheid vijf punten aftrok voor het ontbreken van veiligheidsinformatie in de methodologische nota, terwijl het bestek die informatie nergens als vereiste vermeldde.
Stel je beoordelingsmethode vast vóór de opening van de offertes — en pas ze correct toe
De Raad van State schorst een gunningsbeslissing voor meet- en detectietoestellen omdat de beoordelingsmethode voor het criterium 'functionele waarde' niet vooraf was vastgesteld en bovendien rekenkundig inconsistent was toegepast, waardoor de inschrijver de puntentoekenning niet kon controleren.
Een lagere prijs dan die van jou is niet automatisch een abnormale prijs
De Raad van State verwerpt een vordering tot nietigverklaring van een gunning voor incassodiensten omdat de verliezer niet aantoonde dat de opdrachtgever een kennelijke beoordelingsfout maakte bij het prijsonderzoek of bij de beoordeling van de kwalitatieve gunningscriteria.
Rejection of extreme urgency suspension against non-award of innovation partnership for PFAS purification Port of Antwerp-Bruges — deviation from indicative flow rates and pilot duration may be assessed as negative point — contracting entity's assessment margin for qualitative criteria respected
The Council of State rejected the extreme urgency suspension claim by BV M. against the Port of Antwerp-Bruges' decision not to award it the innovation partnership for PFAS purification of contaminated dewatering water, as the contracting entity did not exceed its assessment margin by treating a pilot setup with a flow rate 13 times below the lower end of the indicative range and a duration of only one month (instead of three) as a negative point, and the indicative technical specifications did not constitute an unjustified restriction of competition.
Iveco challenges DAF's certification on the defence contract — while Iveco itself regularised three items of its own bid
The Council of State rejects Iveco's annulment action against the award of a defence contract for 879 trucks to DAF Trucks: a EURO III certificate based on UNECE Regulation No. 49 is equivalent to the EC type-approval abolished in 2006, and Iveco has no standing to challenge the regularisation of DAF's bid because it itself was allowed to adjust its own bid during negotiations on essential requirements.
If you want to attack the hardware supplier as competitor for the software running on it, do it in the initial petition — not in the supplementary brief
The Council of State rejects Vigo Universal's annulment action against the award to Timescope for developing a VR application that had to run on 'Timescope Mini' terminals supplied by Timescope: Vigo's strongest arguments — that the award criterion contained an unannounced visual sub-criterion, and that Timescope's competitive advantage from an earlier contract should have been neutralised — only surfaced in the supplementary brief and are therefore late.
Suspension of paper framework agreement: origin certificate does not cover all offered paper types
The Council of State suspends the award of a framework agreement for eco-friendly office paper because the contracting authority failed to adequately verify whether the submitted 'Origine France Garantie' certificate covered all specific paper types in the chosen tenderer's offer, while at least one paper type is produced in Brazil.
Sub-criteria that only surface at evaluation? That is allowed — but only under strict EU conditions, and the challenger must prove the breach concretely
The Council of State rejects cleaning company ACTIVA's appeal against the award of five lots of cleaning for military quarters to ISS and Cleaning Masters: the delegation of power to the colonel was legitimate, the use of sub-criteria not pre-weighted complied with EU case law, and ACTIVA showed no concrete assessment error.
The winner confirms the 3-week delivery by email — is that verification enough? The Council of State suspends.
The Council of State suspends, in extreme urgency, BPOST's award of a framework agreement for LED beanies to Prosafco because BPOST verified the realism of the 3-week delivery time (an award criterion) merely by asking Prosafco for confirmation — without demanding concrete justification and without addressing that verification in the award motivation.
'Prices have been checked and deemed normal' is not motivation — confidentiality is no alibi for silence on price review
The Council of State suspends the award of a €3.5M debt collection contract by SWDE and CILE to bailiff firm Étude Bordet, because the contracting authority detected apparently abnormal prices in six of seven bids but merely included a boilerplate phrase in its award report ('prices deemed normal and acceptable'), and additionally gave four bids an identical 38/40 score on methodology with identical descriptions — without demonstrating why these bids could not be distinguished.
The evaluation methodology may surface only in the award decision — and an offer with '…' in its lists will cost you points
The Council of State rejects the appeal: the Region was not required to disclose its evaluation methodology in advance, and the ambiguities in Production's offer (non-exhaustive format list, external DTP graphic designer of unclear cost status, paid hotline) justified the point deductions.
The bond clause in the specifications leaks the estimate — complaining you didn't know is pointless
The Council of State rejects the appeal: a fee percentage is a valid price quotation, and claiming that the estimated contract value was not disclosed while proving in the same pleading that it can be derived from the bond clause undermines your own case.
FWB may validly abandon SEPPT contract after finding both offers irregular
Claim rejected: the FWB could validly abandon the SEPPT contract after finding, in a third sufficiently motivated decision, that Cohezio's offer was, like CESI's, affected by a substantive irregularity and that the disputed award criterion needed revision.
RESA cannot stop green maintenance procurement procedure without solid grounds
Suspension ordered: RESA stopped a green maintenance procurement procedure based on insufficient, inaccurate and contradictory grounds.
Listing technical differences and then giving everyone 24 out of 30: that is how you neutralise your own quality criterion
The Belgian Council of State annuls the award of an artificial-turf pitch contract because the contracting authority listed clear technical differences between the three bids in its award report, but then gave all three an identical 24/30 for 'quality' — and only a 0.5-point difference for 'guarantees' despite warranty differences of up to ten years.
City of Kortrijk may award water treatment DBM contract based on total score
Claim rejected: City of Kortrijk correctly awarded a DBM contract for decentralised water treatment to BelleAqua based on the best total score, where sub-aspects of award criteria do not constitute separately weighted sub-criteria.
ICT management Sint-Truiden: annulment – assessment methodology with sub-criteria and own scoring scale not established in advance, and rule of three incorrectly applied distorting the ratio between award criteria
The Council of State annuls the award decision of the city of Sint-Truiden for ICT infrastructure management, user support and equipment supply, because the contracting authority used an assessment methodology with sub-criteria and a separate 10-point scoring per element that was not established in advance nor announced in the specifications, and because it applied the rule of three to rescale the highest-scoring tender to 100%, thereby distorting the ratio between the award criteria.
Emphyteusis padel courts Asphaltcosite Asse: annulment – policy objectives as assessment elements insufficiently clear in specifications, creating near-unlimited discretion
The Council of State annuls the Asse municipal council's decision to grant an emphyteusis for padel courts, because the award criterion 'socially responsible operation' (50 points) referred to 'policy objectives' on a website containing a 191-page multi-year plan with dozens of objectives, from which the authority selected assessment elements for the first time in the evaluation report — elements not identifiable as such on the website — granting the authority near-unlimited discretion and providing insufficient safeguards against arbitrary and discriminatory assessment.
An award criterion that only measures what you did last year does not measure what you are offering today
The Council of State suspends a mattress recycling award because the quality criterion 'recycling percentage' (60 of 100 points) leaned entirely on a Valumat certificate of 2022 performance — and therefore not on the offer itself, ignored later developments, and used a calculation method that disregards stocks.
Replacing a dietitian with a food safety auditor and quietly adding a second pupil: annulment plus EUR 3,461.50 in damages
The Council of State annuls the school meals contract awarded by Sint-Martens-Latem to Compass Group because the test panel that performed the organoleptic test had a different composition than announced in the specifications — no dietitian, two pupils instead of one — and grants Delimeal EUR 3,461.50 in damages (50 % of 10 % of its offer price of EUR 69,230 excl. VAT, one school year).
A 'senior' on your CV without dates: De Watergroep may award 'good' instead of 'very good'
The Council of State rejects D-Studio's appeal against the award of a BIM framework agreement to BIM Plan: for the 'project team experience' quality criterion (30 points), an authority may rate an offer 'good' (10/30) when concrete dates are missing from CVs — the 'senior' label on its own is not proof.
Household waste management in Etalle: suspension – the 'social considerations' criterion requiring a 'note demonstrating the social character of the company' is too vague and confers unlimited freedom of choice
The Council of State orders the suspension of the commune of Etalle's decision to award the 2024-2025 household waste management contract to DURECO, because the second award criterion 'Social considerations' (20 points), described only as 'a note of maximum one A4 page demonstrating the social character of the company', lacks the clarity and precision required by article 81 of the Law of 17 June 2016 and confers an unconditional freedom of choice on the contracting authority.
ESPPW: renunciation after prior suspension — five grounds insufficient, reinforced motivation required
The Council suspends the French Community's decision to renounce awarding an external prevention and protection service contract, finding all five grounds for renunciation inaccurate, irrelevant or insufficiently motivated in a context requiring reinforced motivation.
Tennis concession: delegation to executive bureau validated, all pleas rejected
The Council rejects the annulment action against the award of a tennis management concession, validating the delegation of powers to the executive bureau of the autonomous municipal enterprise and dismissing grievances about award criteria and motivation.
A 'shelf life in months' isn't arithmetic — production and delivery may share the same calendar month
The Council of State refuses to suspend the award of 5 million surgical face masks to YNK Group, because the winning bidder credibly explained that its 60-month shelf life from delivery holds when production and delivery fall within the same month — even though Protect and Care chose to deduct production and transport time from its own offer.
One precautionary clause too many in your bid = a zero on the entire criterion
A bidder who notes that its 42-calendar-day delivery time 'may be extended by annual public holidays and factory shutdowns' does not get its bid declared irregular — but is awarded 0 out of 5 on the entire 'Delivery Time' criterion, which cost it the contract.
Annulment of concession award for Memorial 1815 due to errors in catering assessment and unequal treatment in offer comparison
The Council of State annuls the decision of the Intercommunale Bataille de Waterloo 1815 to award the service concession for the operation of the Memorial of the Battle of Waterloo to Kléber Rossillon, because the assessment of the catering plan was based on factually incorrect data (500 covers per day instead of the 371 stated in the offer) and because the comparison of offers regarding Dutch-speaking market development and the definition of 'cover' was conducted unequally.
Suspension request for VRT occupational health service contract rejected: innovation assessment within broadly formulated award criterion not unlawful
The Council of State rejects the suspension application under extreme urgency by VZW Premed against VRT's award of an External Service for Prevention and Protection at Work contract to VZW IDEWE, finding none of the three pleas serious — neither the alleged unlawful inclusion of 'attention to innovation' as an assessment element, nor the claimed substantial irregularity due to a sustainability scan, nor the alleged failure to meet the selection criterion regarding public sector experience.
Bike lease suspended: three assessment errors on quality criterion bridge the points gap
The Council of State suspends the award of a framework agreement for operational bike leasing because the contracting authority made three errors in assessing the quality criterion — an unreasonable minus for mandatory maintenance, an unmotivated plus for social employment, and a non-comparative plus for a discount voucher — which together bridge the 2.5-point gap.
Two different references, two identical scores: that needs an explanation
The Council of State suspends the award because Idelux gave the same 5/5 score to a 134-seat reference and a 156-seat reference without any explanation — and because a different score on that single sub-sub-criterion was just enough to flip the ranking.
Communicating only points for the price criterion is motivation theatre: without the percentages, nobody can verify your 'rule of three' was correctly applied
The Council of State annuls via the expedited procedure (art. 17 §6 coordinated laws) the STIB decision of 3 May 2023 awarding a tax consultancy contract to Forecast Consulting, because the reasoned decision merely listed points per bidder for the price criterion without showing the proposed percentages or the application of the price formula.
A contracting authority can cancel and restart a procedure — even if that costs you a near-guaranteed award
The Council of State dismisses Theis Marcel's challenge against SOFICO: under Article 85 of the Belgian procurement law, a contracting authority has broad discretion to cancel and restart a procedure, even after two previous awards have been suspended and a competitor is next in line.
Parallel judgment on lot 2 Spy: the contracting authority's broad power to cancel and restart applies equally here
In the same SOFICO saga as judgment 258.032, but for lot 2 (Spy district), the Council of State confirms that Theis Marcel cannot claim the award: Article 85 of the procurement law allows the authority to abandon and restart the procedure with a corrected specification.
Even when your contract falls outside the procurement law: awarding 64 out of 100 points on publicly available financial ratios is discriminatory
The Council of State rejects RESA's appeal against the Walloon Minister's annulment of its award of a judicial debt-collection contract to bailiff firm Tintin: even for 'excluded' legal services (article 28 §1 4° of the 2016 Procurement Act), the equality principle applies, and using 64 of 100 points on publicly available balance-sheet ratios while you yourself select which firms to consult means you can predict the winner before any bid arrives.
'Public contract' in the title, concession in the facts — only the second matters
The Council of State dismisses LED AD's appeal against the award of an LED-screen concession to Cityscreen because the city legally treated the contract as a concession, despite the term 'public contract' in the heading of the award decision.
Mini-competition under a framework agreement? A price ceiling is not a price examination
The Council of State suspends the award of a 224,400-euro IT contract because the Walloon Region failed to verify the prices submitted in a mini-competition and limited the motivation of the quality criterion to repeating the rating scale.
A social award criterion without a link to the subject matter and without a control mechanism: doubly unlawful
The Council of State annuls a road-marking contract awarded by the city of Enghien because the social-employment award criterion was not linked to the subject matter of the contract and was insufficiently precise to allow control — the winner offered 700 hours of social employment on a contract whose total work volume was estimated at barely 480 person-hours.
Want to challenge a technical evaluation? First calculate whether your grievances can bridge the score gap — otherwise you lose your standing
The Council of State rejects Frontforce's appeal against the award of a dispatching software contract to BV Verdi: one branch was declared inadmissible because a hypothetical recalculation showed that the 7.11-point score gap could not be bridged even if all grievances were upheld.
Challenging a scoring error is pointless if you can't catch up with the winner anyway
The Council of State rejects an extreme-urgency suspension against the award of seven electric service vehicles because even a possible error in the distance calculation would not bridge the 16.59-point gap with the winning bidder.
Rewarding a bid for being 'better than the specifications require' is discrimination
The Council of State annuls a €4.2 million award for the construction of the Parc des Colombophiles in Anderlecht because Brussels Environment awarded the winning bid higher scores precisely because it deviated from a technical requirement in the specifications.
Six abnormally low prices, six times 'answer satisfactory' — that is not a price review
The Belgian Council of State annuls a €655,708 award to GBM because the contracting authority dismissed six abnormally low prices with the same boilerplate line 'la réponse a été jugée satisfaisante', without obtaining a single purchase document or supplier catalogue.
When two bidders in a three-player market suddenly claim twice as many partners, you have to verify — not explain it away
The Council of State suspends an electronic meal-voucher award to Edenred because the French Community uncritically accepted Edenred's dramatically higher partner numbers (39,103 vs 20,592 in Flanders) when Edenred's own offer signaled those figures included MasterCard merchants without genuine affiliation contracts.
Two sister companies, one signature and a score of 5/10 on a 0-2-4-6-8-10 scale: double suspension
The Council of State suspends the award of a 6.7 million euro framework contract for police trousers to Sioen Nederland because the federal police inadequately reasoned the link between Sioen NV and Sioen Nederland BV, and because one competitor (Seyntex) received intermediate scores on an evaluation scale that only allowed even-numbered points.
Same ADN certificate: 'extra experience' for the winner, ignored for the loser — that doesn't hold
The Belgian Council of State suspended an award by Flemish Waterways because in the quality criterion motivation, the same elements (an ADN certificate, government experience, examination committee work) counted positively for one bidder and were ignored for another, without anywhere explaining the difference.
A Proof of Concept with a dual role — compliance check and technical scoring — needs two separate reading lenses
The Council of State dismisses Orange Belgium's challenge to Infrabel's €23.3 million CyberSOC framework award, because Orange's claim that Thales failed the POC rests on a confusion between the POC's compliance check (where everyone scored 'YES') and the technical evaluation (where Thales scored mid-range).
A €9.93m bid against a runner-up of €17m is not automatically an abnormal price — the Council of State leaves the Flemish electronic monitoring award to Attenti standing
The Council of State refuses to suspend the award of the Flemish electronic monitoring contract to Attenti for €9.93m — barely half the runner-up's bid — because economies of scale, proprietary technology and incumbent status can plausibly explain the gap, and because SuperCom cannot credibly close its 42.86-point shortfall on the quality criterion.
School logo on cleaners' uniforms is no hidden sub-award criterion — three rounds of re-awarding confirm it
The Council of State rejects Iris Facility Solutions' suspension claim against GO! Scholengroep Huis 11: assessing 'staff policy', 'wearing the school logo on work clothes' and 'mandatory refresher training' under the award criterion 'quality control' does not create hidden sub-criteria as long as those elements were listed in the specifications as attention points.
Discount for multi-lot award? Then you must rank three times — not once
The Council of State suspends Idelux's award of nine waste-collection lots to Remondis because the intercommunal compared all offers against a single reference point (Remondis with discount) instead of ranking each scenario separately — a calculation error that shifted the outcome in Remondis's favour.
A services concession does not oblige you to conduct a price examination — even if prices differ markedly
The Council of State rejects EMG's claim against the Belgian State concerning the IPC audiovisual concession and explicitly confirms that neither the concession law nor the principles of due care, equality or competition trigger an obligation to conduct a price examination in concessions — a key difference from public procurement regulation.
70 points for service, 30 for price in a book tender: acceptable when the market justifies it
The Council of State dismisses Standaard Boekhandel's challenge against the award to Distri-Bib for the Antwerp public library's book framework, accepting that service may weigh 70 out of 100 points because 85% of deliveries fall under the regulated book price.
The cheapest and best-quality bid still loses. The culprit: how the price criterion was split
The Council of State dismisses Canon's challenge against the award of the Farys printer fleet framework to Ricoh, despite Canon submitting both the lowest overall price and the highest-quality offer — because Farys split the price criterion into three sub-criteria (devices 50%, management software 10%, additional services 5%) based on a documented market study and needs survey, and the weights stand 'in reasonable relation' to the likely importance of each component.
Saying a lawyer has 'no State aid experience' while crediting his teaching of competition law that includes State aid is a contradictory motivation — and it gets annulled
The Council of State annuls the award of lot 18 (State aid) of the Walloon framework agreement for legal services because the evaluation panel wrote that Lexing's lawyer 'lacked practical experience in State aid' while in the same motivation acknowledging that he taught a university course on economic aspects of competition law and was a member of a research centre studying State aid.
An offer without a minus sign is not a negative price — and 'clarifying' it by email after the evaluation report does not save the award
The Council of State suspends the award to Oxfam-Solidarité of a textile collection contract in BEP-Environnement's recycling parks because the contracting authority assigned eleven points to a price of '€1' it treated as negative, while the bid carried no minus sign and the bidder's written confirmation arrived five days after the evaluation report on which the award is based.
Three weeks faster than the winner — and yet the same 20/30: a bonus clause for early delivery you don't apply costs you the award
The Council of State annuls the City of Halle's award of the floor renewal of CC 't Vondel to Phenix Group: the specifications stated that an early delivery would have a 'favourable influence' on the execution-time criterion, but the City gave both Phenix Group and Stals en Zoon Parketvloeren — whose delivery was three weeks shorter — an identical score of 20 out of 30 with the sole motivation 'falls perfectly within [the] requested period'.
BAFO by email instead of e-Tendering: prima facie unlawful — but if you take the email yourself, you can no longer claim an interest in challenging it
The Council of State rejects Spikes NV's extreme-urgency action against the award to Skyhaus BV of an IT contract for the pseudonymisation and automatic summarisation of court decisions — three 'clever' attacks (wrong award amount, price evaluation method, BAFO by email) all fail, and the ruling confirms in passing that e-Tendering is also mandatory for BAFOs, even though the contracting authority is saved here by lack of interest.
A second 'reasoned decision' that fixes the numbers does not save the first
On 4 May 2023 STIB sent MoneyOak a reasoned award decision listing only the scores per bidder — and on 26 May, after the action was already filed, a 'complete' version including the percentages; the Council of State suspends nonetheless because the first version is the one that must be assessed legally.
Requested toilet-replacement simulation rescues bid with installation coefficient 0.2 against price challenge
Imtech bid installation coefficients of 0.2 to 0.5 for sanitary works in Brussels — far below competitors — compensating with a higher materials coefficient; the City asked for a simulation on concrete line items and accepted the justification, and the Council of State follows: in a unit-price contract, what counts is the combination of elements, not one isolated low number.
Strict for the excluded bidder, lenient for the winner — a contracting authority cannot apply the same rule both ways at once
The Belgian Council of State suspends the award of Walloon red-light speed cameras because the Walloon Region rejected Jacops's offer over a technical detail, while simultaneously scoring the winner just above the exclusion threshold for a software demonstration 'essentially given via PowerPoint' — when the tender required a live demo on penalty of exclusion.
A third cheaper than you is no proof of dumping — if you don't read what the tender precisely changes between BAFO rounds
The Belgian Council of State rejects Postalia's suspension claim against a postal services award to Mestrabel: the 33% price gap is largely explained because between BAFO rounds the tender clarified 'item 40 Genk' as 'mainly magazines' — which Mestrabel and Bpost picked up, but Postalia did not.
Between article 35 and article 36 of the Procurement Royal Decree lies a threshold: an explanation that smoothly passes the general price examination doesn't have to become a formal price justification
The Council of State rejects the extreme-urgency action against the award of an architectural study contract in Boom: a contracting authority that, in the context of the general price-and-cost examination (article 35), receives an explanation it finds convincing — adequately motivated — does not have to launch the heavier procedure of article 36 (formal price justification).
An award report that also voices criticism of the winner is no reason to overturn the award — what counts is what the report puts beside it
The Council of State rejects an extreme-urgency action against the award of an architecture contract for a Schaarbeek crèche: the fact that the award report also expresses reservations about the winner does not mean the score of 4 out of 5 is unjustified, when alongside it five concrete advantages are listed that the applicants' bid does not offer.
A withdrawn award decision legally no longer exists — so there is no 'change of position' to motivate
The Council of State rejects the suspension of a second Infrabel award decision, ruling that a contracting authority that withdraws its first decision and re-examines the offers does not have to explain why it now reaches a different conclusion — the first decision retroactively disappeared upon withdrawal and cannot serve as a reference point for a 'change of position'.
A natural-stone boulder where the spec required 'resin concrete': Brussels-Environment punished the compliant bidder, rewarded the deviant — and lost the contract
The Council of State suspends the award of a €4.2 million park redevelopment in Anderlecht because the contracting authority gave the winning bidder bonus points for a natural-stone climbing rock when the specifications explicitly required 'resin concrete' — and so pushed the rule-compliant competitor into second place by 1.68 points.
Demoing 'the wrong product' at your clarification session is not an innocent slip — it cost Roba Pharma 22 points and the contract
The Council of State rejects Roba Pharma's request for suspension because the contracting hospital plausibly assessed its offer for two lots of medicine cabinets worth €2.6 million as poor — partly because Roba Pharma spent its clarification session demonstrating a product that wasn't even in the offer.
Whoever lost the 12-year IRISnet3 contract gets no second chance in extreme urgency — five grounds, all 'not serious'
The Council of State rejects Proximus' extreme-urgency suspension claim against the award of the IRISnet3 contract to Orange Belgium: all five pleas — alleged irregularity of the winner's free tools, abnormal pricing, regularisation issues and evaluation of qualitative criteria — are deemed 'not serious'.
A forgotten check of exclusion grounds for company directors can be cured during the proceedings — stripping the applicant's interest in the ground
The Council of State rejects the suspension of a 59 million euro framework agreement for fibre to Flemish schools, where the applicant discovered that the contracting authority had only requested the criminal record of Telenet as a legal entity, not of its directors as required by article 67 §1 paragraph 5 — but the authority had since obtained those extracts during the proceedings, depriving the applicant of its interest in the ground.
A physical test piece as award criterion for restoration works? Permitted — even if the assessment of craftsmanship feels subjective
The Council of State rejects the extreme-urgency suspension against the award of the 'Maçonneries' lot of the restoration of the Sainte-Croix Collegiate in Liège to the temporary association Galère / Liégeois because a 'pièce d'épreuve' — a physical test piece in carved tuffeau stone — and the accompanying methodological note, together worth 20 points out of 100, are a valid award criterion and no manifest assessment error by the jury was demonstrated.
Did a tender clause look unclear? Ask for clarification during the procedure — afterwards is too late
The Council of State rejects the extreme-urgency suspension against the award of the digitisation of Verviers' civil registry to Vanden Broele because ADM Village only complained about 'incomprehensible' tender clauses after losing — while during the procedure it never asked for clarification and in its reply to the contracting authority's question even showed it understood the requirements, only that it found its own interpretation to offer more 'added value'.
A 'pool of staff' is not a valid use of the personnel-experience award criterion — references about the bidder belong in selection, not in award
The Council of State suspends OCMW Tervuren's award to Compass Group for the meal-catering contract at WZC Zoniën because the sub-award criterion 'References' (10/100) measures the bidder's existing contracts — a selection element — and not the experience of the staff that will execute the present contract; Compass's 'pool of staff' argument hollows out the statutory exception.
A scoring formula that amplifies point differences is allowed — provided the tender documents disclose it upfront
The Council of State rejects an appeal against the award of a €125 million Flemish postal services framework agreement and rules that tender documents may rescale scores on a qualitative criterion so the best bid automatically receives 100% — even if this significantly amplifies the point differences.
Your 10/10 from last year doesn't entitle you to the same score this year
The Council of State rejects Royal Eijkelkamp's emergency suspension request against the award of a €465,850 water-quality contract to Koenders Instruments — the fact that the applicant scored 10/10 on two sub-criteria in an earlier similar procurement does not constitute a serious ground.
Telenet bids 50% cheaper, Proximus demands a price review — the Council: with two bidders, cheap is not yet abnormal
The Council of State rejects Proximus' extreme-urgency challenge to Belnet's award to Telenet of a 5-year connectivity framework, because a price gap of more than 50% and €5 million does not automatically signal an abnormal price — certainly not with only two bidders and a winner that substantiated its pricing in detail.
A social award criterion for painting white lines on the road: too far from the object, too vague to score
The Council of State suspends the award by the city of Enghien of a framework agreement for road marking because it included socioprofessional integration of vulnerable groups as an award criterion that lacked a real link to the object of the contract and was insufficiently precise to compare offers.
A '<' sign before your deadline turns your times into a range — and costs you a major SEPP contract
Cohezio, an established occupational health and prevention service provider, loses its SEPPT contract with the Province of Liège because it used formulae like '< 24h' instead of fixed intervention times — which the province read as a prohibited time range, and which the Council of State found not manifestly unreasonable enough to suspend.
0.11 points apart on a DBM contract worth hundreds of millions — and the Council sides with the authority
Two Belgian construction heavyweights clashed over the new defence headquarters tender; Futureproof Defence finished 0.11 points behind Be Defence and raised five substantial-irregularity grounds, but the Council held that Defence stayed within its broad margin of appreciation and rejected every ground.
The width requirement was 'crucial' for Hilton and a 'target' for Vanderr — with no paper trail, De Lijn has to start over
The Council of State suspends the award of an overhead line maintenance vehicle for the Ghent tram network to Vanderr, because De Lijn first labelled the width requirement (2300 mm) as 'crucial' to Hilton Engineering and then treated it as a 'target' for Vanderr, without any written trace of that change of treatment in the administrative file.
'Yes / no / in order': checkboxes in a table are no motivation for technical regularity — certainly not when the Synergrid homologation is wobbly
The Council of State suspends RESA's 10 million-euro award for 60,000 LED luminaires to Axioma-Lightwell and Schreder because the evaluation report substantiates the technical regularity of the winning tenders merely with three checkboxes reading 'non', 'non' and 'en ordre' — whereas at the hearing it emerged that the driver in the winning offer is not the one with which the luminaire obtained its Synergrid 005 homologation.
G4S loses by 1.38 points and receives three 'negatives' — the Council finds two of them indistinguishable from weaknesses in the winning bid
The Council of State suspends the award of security services for the South Tower to Seris Security because the reasons given for three negative marks against incumbent G4S do not explain why it scored 3.5 points less than the winning bidder on the quality criterion — when the same weaknesses appear in the winning bid too.
'Per-lot ranking' can also mean 'global ranking with per-lot derivation' — and if you don't clarify in advance, the authority decides
The Council of State dismisses Ghent University's suspension against the award of the VDAB GLOW contract because the specification allowed all 18 bidders to be ranked globally — not per lot — meaning Divergent lost its two East-Flemish lots to organisations that bid for other provinces.
Four Limburg training organisations lost all their home lots to Randstad and Emino — and the Council of State can't do anything about it
The Council of State dismisses the extreme-urgency suspension by a consortium of four Limburg specialised training, coaching and mediation services against the award of the VDAB GLOW contract because the specification permitted a global ranking of all 18 bidders and because their local entrenchment and 'evidence-based I care' programme do not oblige the contracting authority to award a higher score.
Before filing an extreme-urgency action, do the maths: AGA challenged 3.06 points across six questions while the total gap was 3.24
The Council of State rejects AGA's extreme-urgency action against the award to Modero of an eight-year framework for bailiff services to the city of Antwerp, because its complaints about the page limit, the demo duration and the motivation are either factually wrong or — for the motivation challenge — leave AGA without sufficient interest: the contested points cannot bridge the total score gap.
The tender requires integration with one supplier's hardware — and that supplier bids and wins. That alone is not bias
The Council of State refuses to suspend an award to French company Timescope for a VR application about Le Grognon in Namur, even though the tender expressly required integration with Timescope hardware — because that specification appears objectively justified by the subject matter of the contract and the applicant cannot demonstrate a concrete advantage.
Schrems II does not automatically make any award to a US cloud partner irregular — if the DPO has analysed the data flow concretely, the award stands
The Council of State rejects the second suspension request against the award of the Flemish Mobility Centre to ViaVan (subsidiary of a US parent, using AWS) because, after a first suspension, the Flemish Region extended its motivation with a concrete review by its Data Protection Officer, and the bidders' contention that no supplementary GDPR measure could ever cure the situation — not even encryption with key control retained in-house — is not credible.
Awarding 'excellent' because a bid is better in 'at least 3 domains' — without ever saying which 3 — costs the award
The Council of State suspends Defence's award of the multi-year green-maintenance contract for the Florennes military zone to Krinkels because the formal motivation lists qualitative strengths per bidder but does not allow verification that the score 'excellent' (reserved for offers better than the others in at least 3 domains) was actually attributed in line with the announced evaluation method.
Lowest tariff, best price — and lost anyway: how four small minus points cost a 10-year bicycle-sharing concession
The Council of State dismisses Marfina's extreme-urgency suspension against the award of the Antwerp bike-sharing concession to Donkey Republic — Marfina won on price and on tariff, but lost 14 points on quality because of an accumulation of details (a coaster brake that did not exist, a maintenance app not available in Dutch, a vague description of a social-employment partner) that each looked minor in isolation.
A 'loose list of grievances' is not a ground — an urgent suspension petition cannot be repaired later through a reply note
The Council of State rejects Frontforce's urgent suspension request against the award of dispatching software by the Flemish Brabant West rescue zone to Verdi: a petition that merely lists points without explaining why a recalculation would change the ranking does not meet the structure and specificity requirements — and what is missing in the petition cannot be added via a reply note.
96 parking spaces against a requirement of 100 is not a substantial irregularity — and a 6.5% architect fee is not abnormal, even when 27% below the runner-up
The Council of State rejects D E Architecten's urgent suspension request against the award to M4 Architecten of a study contract for a local service centre and child-care facility in Sint-Pieters-Leeuw: a bid with 4 parking spaces fewer than required and a fee of 6.5% (against 8.25% for the second-best) is not substantially irregular in this context — and the price examination needs no explicit motivation as long as the contracting authority finds no appearance of abnormality.
Announcing a new Design & Build procedure between the urgency request and the hearing makes the applicant's interest evaporate — but the City of Veurne still pays the costs
The Council of State dismisses Antwerps Architecten Atelier's challenge to the cancellation of the Veurne arts academy architect contract because the city announced a new Design & Build procedure six days before the hearing — yet still orders the city to pay the costs.
An award criterion pointing to a specifications article that doesn't exist, plus headline scores with no breakdown — Villers-la-Ville loses its cleaning tender on a misapplied 30-point criterion
The Council of State suspends the cleaning contract awarded by Villers-la-Ville because the third award criterion ('management and emergency interventions', 30 points) refers to an article 3.1 of the specifications that simply doesn't exist — and the authority gives identical 25/30 scores to bids with manifestly different quality.
Sorting in Lokeren counts as 'processing', pre-treatment in Hamme doesn't — Verko's own contradiction suspends the award
Verko unilaterally moved Van Werven's 'processing site' from Hamme (8.6 km) to Lanaken (149 km), wiping out 20 environmental points — but accepted Renewi's sorting as 'processing'; that asymmetric reading sinks the award.
‘Material aid’ as an award criterion for textile collection: what happens to the collected textile after pickup still counts as ‘link with the subject of the contract’
The Council of State dismisses Recutex-Victrans’s challenge against the award to Televil because a social award criterion that measures how much collected textile a bidder makes available for poverty relief does have a sufficient link with the public contract — it forms part of the final stage of the processing chain, and in a reserved contract for social-economy operators it measures the quality of the service itself.
A selected candidate who fails to submit a first offer is in principle out of the race — unless the contracting authority fully reopens phase two with a fundamentally amended specification
The Council of State rejects the suspension of the award of the Zorg Leuven central kitchen contract to Compass Group, because the contracting authority did not 'continue' phase two of the negotiated procedure but fully halted and reopened it with a fundamentally amended specification — allowing the other selected candidate (who had not submitted a first offer) to participate again.
Switching to the intercommunal entity after the bids have come in — then you must have actually compared the prices, and that comparison must show in the file
The Council of State suspends the decision of Morlanwelz to halt the award of eighteen waste lots and continue cooperation with the intercommunal HYGEA, because the reasoning ('the offered conditions are not sufficiently interesting compared to what HYGEA can offer') is a boilerplate clause that leaves no trace of an actual price comparison.
Calculating the fee percentage on a fixed reference estimate rather than on the actual proposed project budget is no manifest error — it is a legitimate choice of the contracting authority
The Council of State rejects the suspension of the award of the Tournaisis police-station architecture contract to BAEB-BAG-VK Engineering, because a contracting authority that calculates the fee percentage on a common reference estimate (€10m) rather than on each bidder's individual project estimate stays within its discretionary freedom — even if the winner can thereby work with a much higher project budget (€14.3m) than the other bidders.
When your own counsel can't explain your own document: how Limburg.net lost its bin-bag award
The Council of State suspends the award by waste utility Limburg.net to Sphere Belgium because applying the price formula is not the same as the legally required price examination — a defect that became obvious when the contracting authority's counsel admitted at the hearing that he could not explain his own document.
An award criterion that lets the winner pick which prices actually count is no criterion at all
The Council of State suspends the award of four lots of an advertising-vitrine framework agreement for Brussels bus shelters because the financial criterion 'redevance' was calculated using indicative weightings on a product mix that the operator was never required to commit to — making the criterion speculative and invalid.
One office outside the service area: that's not a hidden sub-criterion, it's just less accessibility
The Council of State dismisses the application of a lawyer partnership that lost the Pidpa debt-collection contract — taking into account the spread of offices within the service area is not a hidden sub-criterion but a legitimate reading of 'accessibility for customers'.
Evaluating an excavator while 'abstracting away the boom': that does not work
The Council of State annuls the award of an excavator contract to Luyckx because, at the specification-mandated demonstration, Luyckx brought a Hitachi with a two-piece boom while its bid (and the specification) called for a monoboom — the City of Genk's defence that it 'abstracted away the boom option' during the evaluation does not stand.
An intercommunal bidding 30% cheaper is not an abnormally low price — even when working at cost
The Council of State dismisses TV Willer/ABOG's extreme-urgency challenge against the award of twelve street-drain cleaning lots to intercommunal Intradura, ruling that an intermunicipal cooperative may bid outside its members' territory, that 'no commercial character' does not mean 'no public procurement', and that a 30% price difference explained by a lower hourly wage and higher productivity is not an abnormally low price.
An award criterion is not there to check who meets the spec, but to identify who meets it BEST
The Walloon water utility (SWDE) awarded an 11.6 million euro sludge-treatment contract to SEDE/ATOX based on reasoning like 'sufficient qualified staff' and 'clearly identified resources' — the Council of State suspends because such formulas verify whether bidders meet requirements rather than rank who meets them best.
The same fact can weigh on two award criteria — as long as those criteria measure genuinely different things
Alinea Interieurarchitectuur claimed it was 'sanctioned twice' for the Flemish House in London project because its lack of international experience cost points on both 'design team' and 'references' — the Council of State replies dryly that this is not a double sanction, but the same factor being relevant for two distinct assessments.
Bidding stricter than the special specifications require gives no advantage – not even when the Standard Specifications 250 are stricter
ADEDE loses the contract for clearing WW explosives on the Flemish coast by a single point to a construction company that bid with only one CTE expert, and hears from the Council of State that the special specifications may deviate from the Standard Specifications 250 which normally require two CTE experts.
'Number of public clients in 2016' is not an award criterion — that is history
The Council of State suspends the award of a bailiff-services contract by the City of Andenne because three sub-criteria assess the bidder's existing client portfolio — data the bidder cannot influence and that say nothing about this specific contract.
It's the authority's job to send you the full motivation — not yours to request it
The Council of State suspends the award of a stucco-restoration contract at Gaasbeek Castle because the award report was sent with redacted figures and assessments — with only one point separating winner and runner-up.
'Impossible to assess' is no motivation when the file contains all the data
The Council of State annuls a Brussels rejection for the second time because the selection jury refused to perform the analysis prescribed by its own call for tenders — even though the Council itself shows it could be done, on the very same file.
One kilometre counts for the price criterion, 287 km do not — an open invitation to speculation
The Council of State suspends the award of a multi-year coach transport contract to TRANSIBUS because the price criterion of the city of Mons added only the unit price for a single kilometre, without taking into account the actual distances to be driven — a method that allows structurally different price structures and invites speculation.
If you trail by 8.01 points and can recover at most 8, you don't even get a substantive ruling
The Council of State rejects Conceptexpo's suspension request against the award to Potteau for a furniture contract for the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences because, even if all challenged points were corrected in its favour (gaining 5 points itself, removing 3 from Potteau), it would still finish 0.01 points behind the winner — and a plea with no possible impact on the ranking is no plea.
Giving everyone a perfect score is not an evaluation — and a tennis court contract falls under sub-category G4, not G
The Council of State suspends the award of a contract for two clay tennis courts in Herzele to Sportsbuild, because the municipality de facto neutralised two of its three award criteria by giving every bidder the maximum score, and because the contract fell under sub-category G4 — meaning that classification of the contractor was required, which the winner did not have.
Refusing the government commissioner's visa is no detail — it can flip the entire ranking, and that's allowed
The Council of State rejects the extreme urgency challenge against the award of an orthopedic concession at Ghent University Hospital: after the government commissioner refused his visa on the first award report, the authority could re-evaluate, swapping the winner (V!GO) and runner-up (Aqtor!) — without the commissioner exceeding his powers.
A 'social' award criterion looking at what happens to the textile after the contract — that's allowed, if it fits within the lifecycle
The Council of State rejects the suspension of Dilbeek's textile collection contract awarded to vzw Televil, ruling that the award criterion 'material aid' — which assesses how the contractor uses collected textiles for poverty alleviation — does relate to the contract's subject under the broad lifecycle reading of article 81 of the 2016 Public Procurement Act.
When your own specifications say 'data collection is not an end in itself', your €2.5 million works contract turns into a services contract
The Council of State upholds the Walloon Region's tutelage decision annulling the City of Namur's award of a €2.57 million Intelligent Transport System — the 'works contract' classification fails even though works represent 83% of the budget, because the specifications themselves describe data collection as a mere means serving a mobility-management end.
The same degressive percentage does not automatically apply to every award criterion — read where weighting per item exists
The Council of State rejects the extreme-urgency action of Moments Furniture, which argued that Vivalia should also have applied the degressive percentages (100%, 70%, 40%...) globally to the 'technical aspects' criterion of 45 points — whereas the specifications applied those percentages only item by item, because there was a separate weighting per item in column D of the inventory.
Caught off guard by an unannounced tasting visit with no warm meal ready? Then your bid was the problem, not the contracting authority
The Council of State rejects Compass Group's extreme-urgency action against the award of a €4 million catering contract for the OCMW Aalst care homes to Sodexo, because the specifications expressly provided for an unannounced tasting visit at the production site stated in the bid — and the fact that Compass could only serve cold-line dishes at that visit is its own problem.
Cheapest bid (€42,350), 40/40 on price — and still loses, because the work plan didn't spell out the 'obvious' tender requirements
The Council of State rejects Abesim's extreme-urgency suspension, the lowest bidder for an OVAM phytoremediation study: it scored a perfect 40/40 on price (€42,350 vs €77,755 for the winner) but lost so heavily on quality that OVAM was entitled to award the contract to the more expensive consortium of UHasselt-Bio2clean-Arcadis-Witteveen+Bos.
Two procedural errors by the OCMW — yet no suspension, because without a proven impact on the ranking there is no standing
The Council of State refuses to suspend the OCMW Jodoigne's award to TCO Service for meal delivery to Le Clair Séjour, because ISS Catering shows neither through the unverified honour declaration nor through the 'impossible' 10.59% VAT rate that it should have won the contract.
25 references earn 10 out of 20 — when the contracting authority adds a hidden sub-criterion after the opening
The Council of State suspends the award of the design of the Terhagen community centre because AGB Rumst, after opening of the bids, split the fourth award criterion into two weighted sub-criteria — a split that gave Evolta (25 references) only 10/20 and the winner Signa (2 references) 9/20.
From 30/30 to 12/30 in the BAFO — when the contracting authority drops a hint and you ignore it
The Council of State refuses to suspend the award of the MIVB Erasmus metro depot (77.98 million euros) to THV CFE-Blaton, ruling that in a negotiated procedure with BAFO it is normal for scores to swing dramatically between the first offer and the final offer — particularly when one bidder responds to a mid-procedure signal from the contracting authority and the other does not.
Two foundation rigs for 664 days — 'planning risk' costs Jan De Nul second place, and the 35-point gap kills the rest of the case
The Council of State refuses to suspend the award to THV CFE-Blaton, ruling that an execution period of 664 days with only 2 foundation rigs could reasonably be flagged as a 'planning risk', and that a 35-point gap with the winner deprives the petitioners of standing on every ground that — even at best — cannot put them in first place.
Arguing the specs were written for a competitor? Then your own bid had better not contradict that claim
The Council of State rejects Vita Nova Supra's suspension of the award of a five-year AED supply contract to Half Blue: a bidder who claims the tender specs are tailored to one product cannot simultaneously state in its own offer that it weighed that very product and chose to bid a different one.
A contracting authority that secretly factors budget allocation into a methodology criterion rewrites its own specifications — and gets suspended
The Walloon Region scored the methodological award criteria partly on the basis of budget allocation and person-days that were nowhere announced as criteria in the specifications; the Council of State suspends the award because this modifies the criterion a posteriori or makes it unforeseeable.
Two valid scoring errors in your offer count for nothing if the points gap remains too wide to close
Besix Park persuades the Council of State on two scoring errors — three wrongly deducted points on award criterion 1 and a possibly understated score on criterion 4 — but loses anyway, because even after correction 82.24 points cannot catch Apcoa's 90.
The specification asked for a birthday menu, the bid promised 'a culinary attention': one point less, contract lost
The Council of State rejects Compass Group's suspension request against OCMW Tervuren's award of lot 1 (hot meals) to ISS — at a difference of only 1.10 point between the two offers, small substantive deviations in the bid wording (a 'culinary attention' instead of the birthday menu required by the specifications, a thin treatment of ethnic diversity) fully justify why Compass loses two points on the quality criterion.
One reviewer does 80% of the hours in a 'college of two': no problem according to the Council of State
The Council of State rejects the extreme-urgency suspension against FOREM's re-award to KPMG/Joiris, even though one signing reviewer would perform 584 of the 730 'reviewer hours' — the requirement of a 'college of reviewers' is assessed at the firm level, not at the level of the individual signing reviewers.
A live software demo is allowed — but the bidder cannot score for features that surface for the first time during that demo
The Council of State annuls the award to Randstad of the HYGEA temp-staffing contract because IDEA scored Randstad on two software features — integrated priority lists and cancellation up to 15 minutes before deployment — that were not in the bid itself but only emerged during the product demo a month after bid opening.
Giving everyone 30 out of 30 for methodology? Then you've switched off your own award criterion
The Council of State suspends the 36-month auditor college contract awarded by FOREM to KPMG–Joiris Rousseaux, because the contracting authority gave all four ranked bidders the maximum score (30/30) on the 'audit approach and planning' criterion without concretely explaining why their methodologies were considered equivalent — even though the gap between the first and third ranked bidder on the other two criteria was only 1.08 points.
A contracting authority that overrules its own jury must own the deviation — not rewrite the jury
After an initial suspension, the city of Sint-Niklaas gets a green light for a second award to the same bidder because the council may set aside its jury's advice on the second award criterion in a reasoned way — provided the new reasoning stands on its own.
Challenging a points-table gap in the specifications — when your own bid sits in that gap, you lose standing
The Council of State dismisses an extreme-urgency challenge by Dolmans Landscaping against Eandis's awarding of green-maintenance contracts because the specification gap Dolmans attacked — no points for 'exactly 50%' sheltered-workshop capacity — applied to Dolmans itself on the disputed lot, removing its standing.
Two equal scores of 90/100, another 'concrete case' to break the tie — and the Council annuls: that's adding a new award criterion
The Council of State annuls the award to Luxtax for transporting the National Orchestra's instruments, because the contracting authority — faced with two tied scores of 90/100 — did not follow the procedure of article 101 §3 of the Placement Decree (request for improvement from the two tied bidders) but instead asked all four bidders for a price on a new monthly schedule and used that to build a second comparison table, which amounts to adding an award criterion during the procedure.
Three pages of approach against seventeen: an offer that refers to the specifications gets 6 out of 40
The Council of State refuses to suspend the award of a contract for the preparation of the Flemish primary-care conference to Möbius, because Ghent University submitted only three pages of offer for the criterion 'quality of the approach plan' — largely cross-references to the specifications — while Möbius delivered seventeen pages of detailed methodology, making 6 out of 40 versus 40 out of 40 a defensible point allocation.
Wider opening hours beat 'always by appointment' — and a ground that does not flip the ranking is dead on arrival
The Council of State rejects the emergency suspension by Sita Treatment & Recycling against the award of a bottom-ash processing contract to IMOG and rules that broad standard opening hours can rationally be deemed more flexible than 'on appointment outside narrower hours' — and that a ground without effect on the ranking fails for lack of interest.
Five years of maintenance required in the tender, but only one year in the price formula — not contradictory if the end user signs the maintenance contracts
The Council of State rejects Presta Services' challenge and rules that the contracting authority could include only one year of maintenance in the price formula, even though the tender required bidders to offer at least five years — because the maintenance contracts are signed by sports clubs (the end users), not by the authority itself.
A 'this RFP is not a public contract' clause doesn't make you a private player — BPOST remains an administrative authority
The Council of State holds it has jurisdiction over BPOST's award of a water-fountain contract (estimated €150,000 over 5 years) to John Martin despite the express RFP clause that 'public procurement legislation does not apply' — but dismisses Aquacare's appeal for lack of interest in its grounds.
Announcing four award criteria and quietly using three — voidable
The Council of State annuls the award to Alineater because the municipality of Aubange had announced four award criteria in its tender documents but completely ignored the fourth (energy references) when comparing bids — and admitted having done so.
A clarification sheet the contracting authority asked for itself — then ignored: without explanation, the award cannot stand
The Council of State suspends in extreme urgency the award of the design team for the Grand Théâtre in Verviers because the city set aside a clarifying table it had itself requested from a candidate team, without explaining why, and additionally failed to motivate the rejection on scenography.
Awarding points with 'value added' and 'value lost' without saying how many — does not hold up
The Council of State suspended the award to Sefac for tram lifting columns at De Lijn because the evaluation report assigns points using labels like 'value added', 'significant value lost' and 'very large value added' without ever explaining how many points each is worth.
'Best on two criteria beats best on one' is not a motivation — it's an arithmetic error
The Council of State suspends Infrabel's award to Schenck Process for 15 train weighing systems because the contracting authority simply added up two of three criteria against one, without weighing the actual gap between bids per criterion — while Lloyd's Register was €1.65 million cheaper.
Cover letters count: "valid for 1 month" alongside your bid = materially irregular, bid binned
Dolmans Landscaping wrote in the cover letter accompanying its bid for weed management across seven Limburg municipalities that "this offer is valid until 1 month after the offer date" — Infrax declared the bid materially irregular for deviating from the bid validity period of 90 days set out in the specifications, and the Council of State agreed: the cover letter could be read as part of the offer, even though it was not a completed tender form.
'Removing' a sub-item at evaluation because it won't be executed is not allowed — even if it changes the winner
The Council of State suspends IGEMO's award to Gebroeders Van Den Bogerd because the authority simply set aside sub-item 20 (raising with imported soil) at evaluation — while article 100 of the Royal Decree on procurement requires that all sub-items count in the total sum.
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This page shows all rulings of the Council of State (Belgium's supreme administrative court) on award criteria in public procurement. Each ruling is summarized by TenderWolf in plain language, with a legal lesson and a practical question to ask yourself. View all rulings →