Proportionality
The proportionality principle requires that requirements and criteria are proportionate to the subject of the contract. Disproportionate selection or award criteria can unnecessarily restrict competition and lead to annulment.
STIB reserves a 60,000-case debt collection contract for bailiffs — but forgets to prove why collection agencies couldn't do it
The Council of State suspends STIB's decision not to select a debt collection company for a framework agreement on debt recovery, because STIB exclusively reserved the market for bailiff offices without adequately justifying why this restriction of competition was warranted.
Defence may exclude a company based on classified intelligence — without revealing what it is
The Council of State rejects the claim of a defence company excluded from a DEFRA research consortium based on classified military intelligence about the integrity of its sole shareholder — even though that information cannot be disclosed.
Minister Defensie sloot de Havilland uit van defensieaanbesteding zonder objectieve selectiecriteria
Schorsing omdat de minister de kandidatuur van De Havilland weigerde zonder helder criteria of objectieve gronden, in strijd met gelijkheid.
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.
Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg schreef liftrenovatie uit zonder degelijk onderzoek selectiecriteria
De voorzitter verleende schorsing omdat het ziekenhuis geen gedegen onderzoek had gedaan naar de geschiktheid van deelnemers en de kwaliteit van hun offertes voor dit technisch complexe project.
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.
The e-Procurement platform sends a wrong deadline — the authority excludes the tender but forgets to examine the consequences of its own error
The Council of State annuls Nautisport's decision to exclude a tender for late submission, because the delay was caused by an erroneous deadline on the e-Procurement platform and the authority failed to examine the consequences of that error in light of the equality and proportionality principles.
The turnover requirement for the July 21st celebrations triples — but the authority forgets to explain why
The Council of State annuls the specifications for organizing the Belgian National Day festivities because the State tripled the financial capacity requirement — from €2M cumulative over three years to €2M per year for each of the last three years — without adequately justifying why this increase was proportionate to the contract.
Een referentie voor een privaat revalidatiezwembad is geen referentie voor een publiek toegankelijk zwembad — en wie een referentie niet toewijst aan het juiste selectiecriterium, draagt zelf het risico
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering tegen de niet-selectie van een design-buildteam voor de bouw van een openbaar zwembad te Leopoldsburg, omdat hun referentie 'Bosuil' — een privaat revalidatiecentrum voor profvoetballers — geen publiek toegankelijk zwembad was in de gewone betekenis van dat begrip, en omdat zij hun enige relevante zwembadreferentie in de informatiefiche bij hun aanvraag tot deelneming zelf niet hadden toegewezen aan het selectiecriterium 'Ontwerp – deel technieken'.
Cumulatief selectiecriterium bij meerdere percelen is niet onevenredig als elk perceel gelijktijdig en afzonderlijk moet worden uitgevoerd — de aanbestedende overheid is niet verplicht een inschrijver uit te nodigen om ontbrekende attesten aan te vullen
De Raad van State verwerpt de vordering tegen de niet-toekenning van het tweede perceel van een raamovereenkomst voor groenonderhoud voor Infrabel, omdat het cumulatief selectiecriterium — zes referenties in plaats van drie bij toekenning van twee percelen — op een uitdrukkelijke wettelijke basis berust, niet onevenredig is gezien de gelijktijdige uitvoering in verschillende regio's, en de inschrijver zelf nalatig was door slechts drie referenties met formele attesten in te dienen terwijl zij erkende dat zij er meer had kunnen voorleggen.
Een vraag stellen op het forum verlengt de beroepstermijn niet als het antwoord de opdrachtdocumenten niet wijzigt
De Raad van State verwerpt een vordering tegen selectiecriteria als niet-ontvankelijk omdat het forumantwoord van de aanbestedende overheid het selectiecriterium alleen bevestigde en niet wijzigde — waardoor de beroepstermijn liep vanaf de bekendmaking, niet vanaf het forumantwoord.
If your e-procurement platform shows a different deadline from your email, you cannot brand bids as late
The Council of State suspends the award: Nautisport had announced by email that bids had to arrive by 2 July 2024, but the e-procurement platform itself — where bids had to be submitted — showed 18 July 2024; when Arcadus-Arcadis submitted on 18 July, their bid was rejected as late without any analysis of whose legitimate expectation had been created.
Toit et Moi may reject Dumay-Mior's offer for incomplete fire detection site visits
Claim rejected: Toit et Moi could validly declare Dumay-Mior's offer irregular for non-compliance with the mandatory site visit requirement, despite a visit certificate signed in error.
Your tender specifications were suspended for lack of reasoning? You don't have to lower the bar — you just have to explain better why it's set so high
After the Council of State suspended the first tender specifications for Belgium's national day festivities on grounds of inadequate reasoning for the turnover threshold, the Chancellery was allowed four days later to launch a new tender with exactly the same heightened requirements — because the res judicata of a suspension ruling does not prevent the contracting authority from taking the same decision if it fixes the illegality (the reasoning).
Indexing your own references to clear the threshold: the Council of State doesn't fall for it
The Council of State rejects Dherte's emergency claim against the award of a €23 million school construction contract to Artes because Dherte did two things it shouldn't: applying its own price-revision formula to inflate old references above the tender thresholds, and challenging only the €20 million threshold while its non-selection also independently rested on an unchallenged €10 million reference requirement for a school building.
Turnover threshold doubled without explanation? That's prima facie an unjustified restriction on competition
The Council of State suspends the approval of the tender specifications for the 21 July national holiday festivities because the Belgian State raised the minimum turnover requirement from a cumulative €2 million over three years to €2 million per year — without any concrete, consistent justification in the administrative file.
Suspension of rejection of weed control tender for blank ESPD — excessive formalism in case of material error when completed ESPD had been submitted three days earlier for comparable contract with same municipality
The Council of State suspends the award decision of the Municipality of Riemst which excluded the tender of BV Groenbeheer Baart for weed control 2024-2026 due to submission of a blank ESPD, because the municipality appears to have exceeded the limits of reasonableness by rejecting the tender without further investigation while it had received a fully completed ESPD from the same tenderer three days earlier in the context of a comparable contract with identical selection criteria, and the tenderer had immediately reported the error and pointed to the previously submitted ESPD.
Selection criterion '3 references on non-navigable waterways' for an earthworks contract: not disproportionate, even if <1% of the work touches the waterway itself
The Council of State rejects TRBA's challenge against its exclusion from a Walloon contract for the construction of a retention zone on the Senne, and confirms that a selection criterion requiring 'references on non-navigable waterways' is not disproportionate when the contract is executed in such a geographical context — and that bidders must explicitly demonstrate in their offer that their references meet the criterion.
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.
A volume threshold of 70,000 cases a year is fine — but 'for one and the same client' is a separate decision that needs its own justification
The Council of State suspends the non-selection of bailiff Bordet for the joint debt-collection contract of SWDE and CILE because the selection criterion requiring 70,000 cases per year handled 'for one and the same client' lacks an independent justification and unduly restricts competition — while the previous tender allowed cumulation across multiple clients.
Submit a class-1 accreditation where class 2 is required, then ask whether the authority should have flagged it — that doesn't work
The Council of State rejects NV COS's extreme-urgency suspension against its non-selection for the renovation of the GC De Zandloper grandstand: the contract is indeed a works contract, and a bidder who supplies the wrong accreditation class without invoking article 3, first paragraph, 2° of the Accreditation Act cannot blame the authority for not asking.
Being invited to bid is not the same as being selected: Jacobs learns the hard way that qualifying for one job won't shield you on the next
The Council of State confirms that ORES rightly excluded Établissements Jacobs from lot 17 of the WQBLAAWA framework — being qualified in the system and invited to tender does not mean you have been selected for the specific contract.
A selection criterion may require you to have personnel — not to set aside a specific number of people for this contract
The Council of State suspends the award of BEP Environnement's textile collection contract to Oxfam because the selection criterion '4 drivers and 2 supervisors for the management of the contract' is not a general capacity criterion but a requirement on the specific deployment of personnel — which selection criteria are not allowed to be.
A specification that puts 'non-recoverable judicial costs' on the contractor effectively excludes judicial officers
The Council of State annuls a debt-collection contract because the specifications placed the burden of judicial costs that could not be recovered from the debtor on the contractor — a condition that judicial officers, bound by the 1976 royal decree on their tariff, cannot legally bear.
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.
Challenging a tender as 'tailor-made for incumbent X' fails when the harm comes from a clause you did not actually attack
The Council of State rejects routing-services provider Easypost's suspension request against the IPFBW postal-services tender because the alleged harm in fact stems from the broader requirement that affiliated entities pre-frank their own mail — a requirement Easypost did not actually challenge — rather than from the cumulative obligation to offer two franking methods (stamp + franking machine) that it did challenge.
A reference of 3.2 million euros for a commercial park does not count as a 'watercourse project' when only 299,000 euros were actually performed on the stream
T.R.B.A. submits references of 3.2 million euros (Estaimpuis) and 817,000 euros (Braine-le-Comte) for a selection criterion requiring '2 projects of 600,000 euros on non-navigable watercourses', but the Council of State reads the criterion as 'projects whose main object concerns works on watercourses' – and the Estaimpuis file (a commercial park where only 299,318 euros were actually performed on the Esperlion) does not meet that bar.
Four years of competitive dialogue stopped — and the Council says: one solid reason is enough, here there were two
After four years of competitive dialogue over a GFT processing plant Verko stops the procedure on four grounds — the Council of State holds that the lack of competition (one regular offer left) and the major budget overrun (€31m against an estimate of €13.6m) on their own already support the cancellation, regardless of whether the other two grounds are correct.
Demanding insurance of 3× your tender price is allowed — the '2× rule' from the directive only applies to turnover
The Belgian Council of State dismisses FALCO's appeal and confirms that a contracting authority may require bidders' professional liability insurance to cover at least 3× the tender amount — the proportionality rule that applies to minimum-turnover requirements (max 2× the estimated contract value) is not transposable to insurance guarantees.
A ESPD with only the odd pages scanned: a scanning slip, not grounds for exclusion
The Council of State suspends the award to Roularta because the City of Antwerp excluded Roto Smeets' bid for an incomplete ESPD (only odd pages scanned), although the scanning error resembles 'an inadvertent slip' and the equality of bidders was not at stake.
Leaving an unsigned offer on e-procurement isn't a double submission — it's an abandoned half-finished project
Aswebo had uploaded documents to e-Tendering without ever signing the submission report, then joined THV Stadsbader-Aswebo for a 7-million-euro road works tender — Roads and Traffic excluded both offers as 'double bids', but the Council of State suspended that decision: art. 54 §2 requires a purpose-related test, not textual punishment.
A turnover requirement of fifty times the contract value is striking — but if one valid exclusion ground holds, the appeal does not fly
The Council of State rejects VR Conteneur's extreme-urgency action against Intradel: even if the requirement of €10 million annual turnover for a contract worth €200,000 is debatable, the non-selection also rests on the absence of a welding robot — a requirement Intradel was entitled to set — and the awardee ANG could rely on its Polish subsidiary's consolidated turnover under article 74 RD 15/07/2011.
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This page shows all rulings of the Council of State (Belgium's supreme administrative court) on proportionality 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 →