Price justification
When a price appears abnormally low, the tenderer must be given the opportunity to justify its prices. The contracting authority must carefully and concretely assess the justification — a motivated acceptance or rejection is required.
When you ask the lowest bidder to justify both total price and three unit prices — and he answers only on the three unit prices
The Council of State suspends an award for 448,857 euros in an open procedure because the authority asked the winner to justify both the total price and three suspect unit prices, the winner justified only those three unit prices, and the authority's decision does not say a word about the missing justification for the total.
'Our subcontractor has nearly 60 years of experience' does not justify a paint output of 135 m²/day
The Council of State rejects COMABAT's suspension request because the social housing company Sambre et Biesme rightly found the offered paint prices abnormally low: the subcontractor's claimed output of 135 m²/day was more than double what both an internal technical manager and an independent architect considered realistic.
'Those guardrail end-pieces are already in our stock' — accepted as a price justification
The Council of State rejects the suspension request from the second-ranked bidder because Fluvius was entitled to accept that a low unit price for steel guardrail end-pieces was explained by the fact that the winning bidder already had them in stock, fully depreciated.
Sand bed not in the price? Then your HVAC bid is irregular — even if you think earthworks aren't your lot
The Council of State rejects the annulment appeal of an HVAC contractor whose bid was excluded because it did not include the sand bed for underground PEHD pipes in its prices — even though the contractor claimed that service belonged to the structural works lot.
Silently departing from the bill of quantities is not correcting — it's deviating
A tenderer who uses a different quantity than prescribed in the bill of quantities for a lump-sum post without explicitly flagging it commits a substantial irregularity, not a correctable arithmetic error.
0.5% screening threshold in price investigation passes legality test
A contracting authority may apply a weight threshold during price investigation to select non-negligible items, provided the threshold is carefully established and stays within the bounds of reasonableness.
Annulment of award for energy renovation experts (INTERREG RENOVALT) – IFAPME allowed chosen tenderer to improve offer by requesting additional details on award criterion without giving same opportunity to other tenderer (violation of equal treatment)
The Council of State annulled IFAPME's award of lot 1 (Walloon side) of the contract for energy renovation experts under the INTERREG RENOVALT project to SM POLY-TECH, because IFAPME asked only POLY-TECH to detail its offer for the five sub-activities of the qualitative award criterion (technical-pedagogical competences) in violation of the equal treatment principle, while SM ST.AR.TECH was not given the same opportunity, and the precisions obtained contained new elements that were positively assessed.
Eight grounds over 104 pages in an extreme-urgency petition? The Council of State reads that as proof the case isn't serious
The Belgian Council of State rejects Etude Bordet's extreme-urgency suspension against an SWDE water-collections contract awarded to Venturis, noting explicitly that an extreme-urgency petition setting out eight grounds over more than a hundred pages is hardly compatible with the 'apparent illegality' such a suspension requires.
Road maintenance Baelen: price justification based on subcontractor offer for different quantities is manifestly unreasonable
The Council of State annuls the award of a road maintenance framework agreement because the contracting authority could not accept the winning tenderer's price justification for three bituminous surface treatment items — a mere reference to a subcontractor's offer without detailed substantiation is insufficient, and the subcontractor calculated prices based on 1,000 m² while the bill of quantities specified 100 m², meaning the unit prices for the bill quantities were not justified.
Rejection of price justification for 42.86% cheaper geophysical survey tender withstands marginal review
The Council of State rejects the emergency suspension request against the declaration of substantial irregularity of a tender for geophysical soil research, ruling that the contracting authority could reasonably find that the price justification — consisting of general efficiency factors and a mere cost breakdown per item — did not adequately rebut the apparent abnormality of a total price 42.86% below the average.
Rejection of extreme urgency suspension against irregularity declaration for framework agreement bank works Resilient Westhoek — price justification rightly rejected due to missing overhead on study portion, unsubstantiated unit prices and post factum justification — negligible items correctly delineated using 0.25% threshold
The Council of State rejected the extreme urgency suspension claim by TM B.-G.D. against the Vlaamse Waterweg's declaration of their offer for the 'Resilient Westhoek – Bank Works' framework agreement (€30 million) as substantially irregular, as the authority did not exceed its assessment margin: the 0.25% threshold for negligible items was carefully determined, the grounds for rejecting the price justification were sound, and arguments not included in the actual price justification were post factum justifications the authority need not consider.
Suspension of award of insurance brokerage pooling contract for Flemish government entities – statement of reasons for price investigation is mere boilerplate: estimate redacted, justification elements not concretely assessed, reasons communicated ex post via observations and intervention request
The Council of State suspended the award by the Flemish Community of an insurance brokerage pooling contract for Flemish government entities to NV A., because the first limb of the single ground was serious: the statement of reasons for the price investigation in the award report was mere boilerplate — the estimate was redacted, the three justification elements from the price justification were adopted without concrete assessment, and the redaction of essential reasons in the version communicated to the applicant violated the formal statement of reasons obligation.
Suspension of fire station renovation award due to inadequate price justification examination — municipality failed to examine price justification in its entirety and rejected offer on factually incorrect grounds
The Council of State suspended the award of works for the renovation and extension of the fire station and municipal depot in Sint-Gillis-Waas, finding that the municipality had not examined the tenderer's price justification with the required diligence and had declared the offer irregular on grounds lacking factual and legal basis.
A 37% discount 'verified' with one boilerplate sentence? That is not a price review.
The Council of State suspends an award because the Walloon Region failed to concretely verify the 30-40% discount on the combined bid of the winner — the boilerplate line 'after verification, the prices are normal and acceptable' is dismissed as a stock phrase.
From a +96,000 euro estimate to a -8,000 euro bid: 'market evolution' is not enough as price justification
IDELUX awarded the valorisation of CUA compost to Valodirect at a negative price of -8,000 euros, although IDELUX itself had estimated the contract at +96,000 euros — the Council of State suspended because the reasoning was limited to general observations about an evolving market, without concretely explaining how the winning bidder could actually operate profitably at those specific volumes.
A humble "deemed satisfactory" next to each line: final bill 75,879.99 euros in damages
The Council of State awards POLYMAT SAV 75,879.99 euros in damages – 10% of its bid – because the Résidence Préfleuri approved GBM's price justifications with nothing more than "the response was deemed satisfactory" next to each line item.
A line item at €0 doesn't automatically make an offer irregular — the contracting authority must first prove that item is non-negligible
The Council of State suspends the rejection of an offer in which one line item (steel mounting brackets for fire extinguishers) was priced at €0, because La Sambrienne failed to motivate why that item was non-negligible and did not identify which specific requirement from the tender documents was allegedly breached.
VMG-De Cock appeal against irregularity declaration for Bert Carlier refectory offer rejected — insufficient price justification does not outweigh 40% below average
Appeal rejected: VMG-De Cock's annulment appeal against the irregularity declaration of its offer for the renovation of the refectory at the Bert Carlier Institute in Ghent is rejected — the brief price justification for a unit price 41% below average failed to sufficiently rebut the presumption of abnormality despite reference to an in-house carpentry workshop, and the contracting authority was not obliged to conduct a follow-up inquiry.
School Het Oogappeltje Wommelgem: annulment – abnormal price detection method unverifiable and price investigation of selected items insufficient
The Council of State annuls for the second time the award decision of the municipality of Wommelgem for the extension and renovation of primary school Het Oogappeltje, because the submitted documents do not show that the detection of apparently abnormal unit prices was carried out in accordance with the contracting authority's own methodology — using a 1% rule and 30%/50% thresholds — and because the investigation of the selected items did not meet the requirements of a normally diligent contracting authority, as abnormal unit prices were accepted based on vague and general findings without requesting price justification.
Zandvliet waiting dock: rejection of annulment appeal – negative unit prices for soil disposal in Rotterdam insufficiently justified, contracting authority's assessment margin not exceeded
The Council of State rejects the annulment appeal by the temporary association HYE–Boskalis against the award by De Vlaamse Waterweg for the construction of a waiting dock at Zandvliet, because the negative unit prices for soil disposal in Rotterdam (-€4/m³ and -€5/m³ for items 2 and 3 of conditional part 1) were insufficiently justified — the adjustment of a reference price for Maas sand of €6.50/m³ down to €4 and €5/m³ due to 'lesser quality' lacked further specification or argumentation, and the contracting authority did not exceed its assessment margin.
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 price justification can be in words — but not in clichés
The Council of State suspends the award of the Bosvoorde racetrack renovation to Heyrman-De Roeck because Leefmilieu Brussel accepted a price justification consisting of purely generic elements ('experience', 'cooperation', 'CO2 reduction'), without numerical substantiation and without any substantive evaluation by the contracting authority itself.
Rejecting a bid for abnormal prices? You must also state why those items are 'non-negligible'
The Belgian Council of State suspends the award of a green-space maintenance contract to Eurogreen because Bruxelles Environnement explained in detail why two of Krinkels' unit prices were abnormal — one assumed a gardener mowing eleven football fields a day — but nowhere motivated why those items qualified as 'non-negligible' under Article 36 of the Royal Decree of 18 April 2017.
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.
An oral statement during the site visit doesn't amend the tender — and so cannot make an offer irregular
The Council of State suspends the award of an asbestos-removal contract to Laurenty because the Régie des Bâtiments rejected SBMI's offer based on an oral instruction given during the site visit and only partially addressed SBMI's price justification in its reasoning.
Rejecting a bid for one item worth 0.12% of the total? Then you really must explain why that's 'substantial'
The Belgian Council of State suspended the award of a bike path in Seraing because the city declared Colas Belgium's bid void over a single irregular item representing 0.12% of the bid total, without anywhere explaining why that irregularity was 'substantial'.
Hide your purchase price in the rental cost, and you write your own bid into the bin
The Belgian Council of State dismisses Symobo's challenge: by openly admitting in its price justification that it had shifted part of the purchase price into the rental items 'for commercial reasons', it made its bid incomparable with the competitor's — and therefore substantially irregular.
In a negotiated procedure you may refuse regularisation — but the file must show you considered it
The Council of State suspends the award of lot 2 of La Louvière's parks-guarding contract because the contracting authority, when finding Seris Security's offer substantially irregular for an 'abnormally low' price, failed to demonstrably weigh whether to allow regularisation under article 76, § 5, of the placement royal decree — a discretionary power that must actually be exercised.
A 'request for clarification' is not a price investigation — only a real suspicion of abnormality triggers the wage / CLA check
The Council of State refuses to suspend the award of the OTW guarding contract for Namur station to Securitas: a request asking the bidder to explain price differences between rate items does not constitute a formal price investigation under article 44 of the special-sectors royal decree — and without that investigation, no obligation to verify wage and collective-bargaining compliance is triggered.
SOFICO reads a binding yield threshold into its own tender documents — and loses the same award for the third time
The Council of State suspends the €3.17m award of a road-verge maintenance contract to SA Krinkels because SOFICO turned 'estimated' figures from Annex D of its own tender documents into binding yield and duration thresholds during the price review — leaving bidders unable to know in advance that any deviation would automatically signal an abnormal price.
€1 million cheaper and still excluded: forgotten road signalling in item B.01.01 makes the bid irregular
The Council of State confirms that Wallonia rightly excluded the lowest bidder (€4.52M) because one major item of its price justification did not include the legally required road signalling — and may simultaneously accept the winner (€5.80M) on the basis of a short but concrete reasoning.
Trade secrets are not a free pass for a boilerplate clause when prices look abnormally low
The Council of State suspends the award of two SNCB lots because the contracting authority itself flagged the winner's prices as apparently abnormally low, requested justification, and then dismissed the response with a single sentence in the award decision.
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.
An offer 54% below the average still gets awarded — because the 15% rule targets the total price, not every unit price
The Council of State refuses to suspend a Sofico award to Men At Work for €456,120.80 — even though the offer was 54% below the average — because Article 36, §4 of the Procurement Royal Decree only requires verification of the total price and the contracting authority enjoys broad discretion in doing so.
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.
49% under estimate, no price justification requested — a two-page internal memo suffices
Eqos Energie lost to De Witte-Vandecaveye, who bid 27% below the average and 49% below the estimate — without STIB-MIVB requesting a price justification; the Council held that the internal memo analyzing market fluctuations and historical prices was sufficient, even without a formal challenge.
An Apple discount only meaningful when bundled with a laptop: post-factum motivation does not count
PXL university college awarded an Apple supply contract to Econocom because of an unusually high discount on one specific product; the Council suspends because the administrative file lacks any explanation — and the argument that 'this product is only ordered with a laptop' was raised only in the procedural notes.
€21M versus €36M and €40M: a price matching the estimate is not an abnormal price — even when competitors quote double
SNCB awards an 8-year framework agreement for ticket machines to Conduent at €21.4 million while Almex bid €36.2M and Scheidt&Bachmann €39.7M — and the Council refuses suspension under extreme urgency because Almex did not directly attack one essential reason given by SNCB: that Conduent's amount matches the original estimate, and that single reason suffices to remove any appearance of abnormality.
Below the European threshold a contracting authority is not required to ask for price justification — but 'not required' is not the same as 'forbidden'
The Belgian Council of State suspends an award because the Province of Antwerp rejected a sole trader's offer for an abnormally low hourly rate of €34.70 without first questioning the bidder — when the tender concerns intellectual services without any indicative quantity, mere price difference is insufficient to unilaterally conclude the price falls 'below cost'.
An 'abnormally high' negative price is just as suspicious as an abnormally low one — IVAGO learned that the hard way
The Belgian Council of State suspends a textile collection contract because IVAGO accepted the winning bid of €1 million (in a contract where bidders pay the authority) without numerical substantiation, while that price was double what the same bidders had offered in comparable contracts.
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.
A price 25% below the average survives — and the winner can still ask for an extra €100,000 once the bid commitment period expires
The Council of State rejects an extreme-urgency action against the award of the Bruges artificial-turf contract to Lesuco: a total price 25% below the average can be justified by 'market leadership, turnover and expertise', and when the bid commitment period expires, the winner may request price increases due to market conditions without the other bidders getting a chance to revise their bids.
If you don't check your e-Notification dashboard, the contracting authority can reject your bid — 'I didn't get the email' is no defence
The Council of State dismisses the extreme-urgency challenge by Tectum Constructors against the award to SCTD for the roofs of the Mons Music Academy: when the procurement is run via e-Notification, a bidder who does not consult its restricted file on that official platform cannot later claim it missed a price-justification request — the authority is not required to prove that the bidder actually received or opened the invitation.
'Prices were adjusted where necessary': three words in a tender evaluation report enough to suspend De Lijn's printing framework
The Council of State suspends LijnCom's award of the framework contract for printing and adhesive advertising on De Lijn buses to 3Motion, because after the price justification round the contracting authority 'adjusted' some of the winner's unit prices — whereas article 36, § 3 of the 2017 placement royal decree offers only three options: reject the tender, reject the tender, or give reasons why the total amount is not abnormal.
Extracting a 500 mm centre-to-centre distance from a BIM model while the specifications show a figure with 122 mm: that bet Franki lost
The Council of State rejects Franki Construct's extreme-urgency action against the award of the cycle bridge at the N75 in Dilsen-Stokkem to Stadsbader: deriving a centre-to-centre spacing of 500 mm from an enlarged detail of the layout plan, while the specific specifications twice show a figure with 122 mm and safety requirements rule out a large opening, does not create a contradiction between the plan and the specifications that could be resolved via the precedence rule.
'We are the largest sand trader in the Netherlands' is not a price justification
The Council of State rejects Hye-Boskalis' extreme-urgency challenge against the award of the Zandvliet waiting dock to Herbosch-Kiere–Hens: negative unit prices of -€4 and -€5 per m³ for the disposal of dredged sand cannot be substantiated with Boskalis' market position and a single comparison contract from another project — when you deviate sharply from the estimate AND from the competitors, your justification must be cost-component-by-cost-component, not story-by-company.
The winner built the very quality framework the tender relies on — and that alone is not a reason to exclude them
The Council of State refuses, in extreme urgency, to suspend an award where the winning bidder (IPSO) had previously drawn up the quality reference framework and supporting database that the new tender re-used — because the applicant could not concretely demonstrate a competitive advantage.
A payslip does not prove where your worker lives — and without that home address, your 25-minute response time falls apart
The Council of State rejects Aquastructo's suspension request against its exclusion for unjustified abnormally low prices in the road-salting and snow-clearing tender for the Aarschot district, because the payslips Aquastructo submitted to evidence its short response times only state the place of employment — not the home addresses of the workers from which the claimed central location would have to be inferred.
Repeating a price is not justifying it — the City of Kortrijk loses its four-year HVAC framework agreement
The Council of State annuls the City of Kortrijk's award to Vergote bvba because the city accepted a 'price justification' that consisted merely of a repetition of the offered price — a fixed hourly rate of 45 EUR (21.19 % below the average) was justified with the sentence 'our standard rate is 47 €/h for private clients, because we can deploy someone full-time on this project we can apply 45 €/h'.
Three Infliximab bids ranging from €68.89 to €405.22 — and your motivation reads 'two are generics'? That's a 'gross error' that brings the award down
The Council of State suspends the award to Sandoz of an Infliximab framework agreement for the CHR de la Citadelle hospital because the contracting authority wrongly classified the two cheapest offers as 'generics' while they were in fact 'biosimilars' — a substantive distinction that should have underpinned the price justification of an 80% price gap.
One abnormal unit price knocks your whole bid out of the race — even if your total amount looks competitive
The Council of State rejects De Vriese's urgent suspension request against the award of bicycle-path maintenance in Ostend to Adiel Maes (€635,072.36): bidders who limit their price justification to a breakdown of activities, or to a reference to their subcontractor's offer, risk having their bid declared irregular on a single item — losing the entire contract.
A price justification rejected in a first procedure cannot be recycled in the next — not even when the price has since been 'adjusted'
The Council of State suspends the award of the urban renewal works in Charleroi (€30.1 million excl. VAT) because the city relied, for a suspiciously high unit price of the winning bid, on a price justification it had itself rejected as unacceptable in an earlier procedure — while the price had since been 'adjusted' without any new inquiry.
'Clustering' unit prices across three related items is allowed — Middelkerke keeps its €685,683 award to Penninck
Norré-Behaegel argued that the winner had priced all the labour into a single item and left the other two empty, but the Council of State accepts 'clustering' of unit prices across related items as long as the contractor backs up the productivity figures with concrete data and invoices.
A price justification that combines the Bureau des Prix estimate with the requested unit-price justifications suffices, even if the analysis covers less than two thirds of the offer amount
The Council of State rejects the annulment of the award to Colas Belgium for the E411 rehabilitation (€8.89m), because a contracting authority that bases its price examination on a Bureau des Prix estimate combined with reasoned justifications of certain unit prices it queried with the bidder satisfies its examination and motivation duty — even if that analysis covers less than two thirds of the offer amount.
An irregular bidder gets only the extract on its own exclusion – not the award decision behind the winner
Heyrman-De Roeck is excluded for an unaccepted price justification and wants to scrutinise the price justification of the winner – who won with a price 100,000 euros higher – but the Council of State explains that the law of 17 June 2013 only entitles an irregular bidder to an extract setting out the grounds for its own exclusion, and that scrutiny of abnormally HIGH prices may anyway be more lenient than scrutiny of abnormally LOW prices.
A contracting authority may keep the price justification confidential — but must show that it actually examined it
ISPPC awarded a debt-recovery contract to VENTURIS at €1.98 per file — twice cheaper than the runner-up and three times cheaper than the field average of €1,438,448 — but the award decision nowhere explained why the price justification was convincing, and the Council of State suspends.
Rejecting an offer 35% above your budget as 'unacceptable' is not an irregularity — certainly not when that budget was nowhere in the tender documents
The City of Antwerp rejected Antwerp Recycling Company's offer as irregular because the total price was 35% above the available budget, without mentioning that budget in the tender documents and without price questioning — the Council of State suspends the award to Bruco Containers for breach of the price examination regime under the 2017 Award Royal Decree.
Accepting an 'abnormally high' price is permitted under softer rules than rejecting an 'abnormally low' one
The Belgian Council of State dismisses the appeal against the award to Van Wellen for the structural maintenance of the E19, and explicitly establishes for the first time that an examination of abnormally HIGH prices is fundamentally different from an examination of abnormally low prices — the contracting authority may take a softer stance on accepting price justifications, and the grounds in art. 36 §3 of the Royal Decree of 18 April 2017 are not exhaustive.
You can complain about the absence of a price check even if you submitted the lowest bid — and a comparative price table is not a price check
The Council of State suspends the award to Malysse of a framework contract for the rental and maintenance of workwear for VIVALIA because the administrative file nowhere shows that the contracting authority carried out an effective price check, and rules that even Servitex — the lowest bidder — has standing for this plea.
Family business, simple project, lower recognition class, nearby sites — four soft arguments together suffice to justify an abnormally low price
The Council of State rejects Swinnen's suspension request against the award to the family contractor Nelis for a youth meeting centre in Zaventem, confirming that a contracting authority may accept a price justification based on non-numerical arguments — such as a family structure, a simple project and synergy through proximity — provided those elements are plausible and reasonable when read together.
Claiming in a pre-litigation letter that the winner used 'wrong measurements' can backfire — unless you put it in your application
The Council reopens the debate in VMG-De Cock's challenge to the award to Himpe (€2,671,181 for the new local services centre De Mantel in Zwijnaarde) and rejects OCMW Ghent's argument that VMG's own bid would be irregular because she based her price on a different undermining width than the bill of quantities — a legal appreciation in a 26 October 2016 letter does not bind the Council.
A radiation-shielding block estimated at €800/m³ when it costs €5,000 on the market — two years after the suspension was rejected, the €47.8m Jules Bordet award is annulled
The Council of State annuls the award of the structural-shell lot for the new Jules Bordet Institute to the temporary association CFE-Blaton-Entreprises Louis De Waele (€47.8 million) because the contracting authority accepted a unit price of €1,163/m³ for a radiation-shielding block that the market sells at around €5,000/m³ — the benchmark used (a prior estimate of €800/m³) rested on a misreading of a Veritas quote as if it included 357 invisible tons of lead.
A bid 31% below the average survives price scrutiny thanks to a single 32-page annex
Stadsbader bid 31% below the average for an Infrabel rail works contract — and survived price scrutiny because they spontaneously included a detailed calculation of their ten largest line items, six of which actually proved more expensive than the complaining competitor's.
A price justification based on 3 hours of work — when the specifications require two buses — isn't analysis, it's negligence
The City of Ninove awarded a school transport contract priced at €107,611 (GEO) to a competitor at €41,190 — almost 2.5 times cheaper — after a 'price justification' based on three hours of service, even though the specifications required two separate buses on separate routes.
You can't explain away unit prices that are 81% above and 68% below the average by saying 'the total price is normal'
The Council of State suspends the award of a demolition and new-build contract in Lommel because the city had not investigated unit prices ranging from 81% above to 68% below the average — a 'normal' total price and a vague reference to 'clustering' between items cannot replace that investigation.
Ask the contracting authority to justify your price — and they discover where your offer doesn't match the specifications
ENERGYS, ranked first with the lowest offer for the HVAC of the Iris-Sud hospital, is declared irregular for abnormally low prices — and the Council of State refuses to suspend because its own price justification revealed it had not bid on all technical specifications.
Asking for a €48,275 price supplement after the bid validity period? You may lose your awarded contract to a competitor
Devagro had won the demolition of the Veurne sugar factory for €574,887.92, but its registered request for a €48,275 price supplement prompted the contracting authority WVI to let all bidders revise their prices — and Aertssen took the contract at €610,625.42 while Devagro fell to second; the Council of State dismisses the challenge to that new award.
Justifying a price by saying 'this is what my subcontractor charges' is no justification — and miss the 30-day clock after a rejected suspension, and you lose your annulment too
Wanty's bid for the rehabilitation of the Oignies mine site was declared irregular because three items had been justified by simply pointing to the subcontractor's price — a justification that does not satisfy art. 21 of the RD of 15 July 2011 — and after the extreme-urgency suspension was already rejected, Wanty filed no request to continue the annulment within 30 days, so the Council of State records the abandonment of the action.
If your consulting engineer says 'request a price justification' and you don't — explain why
The Council of State suspends a EUR 4.05 million road-works award because the city of Nieuwpoort dismissed without explanation its own consulting engineer's advice to request a price justification for seven abnormally low unit prices.
Three years of identical works as a subcontractor for the same contracting authority — yet your price is declared 'abnormal' without that fact being assessed
The Council of State annuls the award of motorway maintenance in Flemish Brabant (A-roads West, EUR 450,000) to Deckx Algemene Ondernemingen because the Roads and Traffic Agency dismissed the price of the lowest bidder, Norré-Behaegel (–72.60% discount), as abnormal without addressing its central justification — that it had executed the very same lot for three years as a subcontractor for ABOG at comparable prices.
A price of €0.04 for a demand letter is not a real answer to a price-justification request — accepting it is a manifest error
The Council of State annuls the award of TEC Charleroi's debt-recovery contract: the contracting authority too readily accepted that a €0.04 price per demand letter could be justified by saying letters would be delivered during the bailiffs' regular rounds.
Lowest price with a submersible pump that doesn't meet the specifications: technical non-compliance costs you the standing to litigate
The Council of State dismisses the extreme-urgency challenge by the joint venture WeGroSan/Antea against the awarding to Sportinfrabouw, because the joint venture — the lowest bidder at 1.39 million euros — submitted three items technically non-compliant with the specifications (submersible pump, irrigation control cabinet, sports underlay) and failed to contest this finding in its petition, depriving it of standing to challenge the award.
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.
'Cheap Indian subcontractor' isn't a price justification — especially when the buyer checks your sample and finds it full of errors
CICADE bid less than a quarter of the estimate and about a third of winner Pixelius's price for digitising Wallonia's landscape features, and justified it with one sentence about an Indian subcontractor at "just a few dollars per hour" — the Council of State upholds the exclusion for abnormally low price because the justification wasn't quantified, gave no hourly rate, and didn't include correction time after quality control.
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This page shows all rulings of the Council of State (Belgium's supreme administrative court) on price justification 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 →