Opinion Issued On Public Procurement And Consortium Agreements

The Commission for Protection of Competition has issued an opinion¹ on public procurement and consortium agreements concluded between competitors in tendering and public procurement procedures.

The commission views consortium agreements as restrictive agreements, as they inevitably set prices and other commercial requirements for performing specific transactions. Therefore, such agreements must be submitted to the commission for an individual exemption.

The commission bases its analysis of the permissibility of such agreements on whether any of the parties to the agreement could have independently submitted a bid in the public procurement procedure in question. If any party is in a position to submit a bid independently (ie, it independently fulfils all tender criteria), such a bidder cannot be party to an agreement to submit a joint bid, and such an agreement will not be exempt. In other words, parties to an agreement can expect a favourable individual exemption