Judgment of 27th February of the South-Central Administrative Court (SCAC) (case 4187/24.9BELSB), Portugal
Article(s) in Directive 2014/24/EU: Articles 18 and 69 of Directive 2014/24/EU.
Topic: open procedure; exclusion of offer; labor law obligations; abnormally low tender
Member State: Portugal
Court/rev. board: South-Central Administrative Court (SCAC)
1. IMPLEMENTATION / RELEVANT NATIONAL LEGISLATION
2. FACTS
One of the excluded bidders from an open procedure for a private security services contract challenged the award decision, and his own exclusion. He claimed that labor law obligations had been infringed by the winning bidder, given the low value of the bid. From his point of view, the costs in the winning offer could not comply with labor law rights afforded to workers by a collective agreement that was applicable in the situation.
In line with the appellant’s reasoning, the SCAC decided in the opposite direction to the first instance.
3. JUDGMENT
The Court decided that the winning bid had presented a salary, per security guard, below the value established by the Portuguese labor rules, which was the proof that the contract to be signed would imply a violation of the applicable labor-related obligations and therefore should be excluded.
The SCAC also took this opportunity to highlight the importance of labor law obligations for the EU public procurement directives, alongside the observation that it is, nowadays, uncontroversial that the contracting authority has the duty to verify the compliance with these legal obligations throughout the procedure, and that bids violating them shall be excluded.
