Abstract

Tender specifications setting out the important conditions and criteria of competitive bidding for a contract is one of procurement documents in the meaning of Article 2.1 Paragraph 13 of Directive 2014/24/EU. Contracting authorities are obliged to provide contractors with the information necessary to prepare and submit tenders. Contracting authorities are to treat contractors equally and in a non-discriminatory manner, and must act in a transparent way. The meaning of the tender specifications must be determined by adopting the perspective of potential tenderers, since the aim of the procedures for the award of public works contracts is precisely to guarantee that contractors established in the European Union have access to public contracts. The principle of transparency implies that all the conditions and detailed rules of the award procedure must be drawn up in a clear, precise and unequivocal manner in the notice or contract documents to ensure that, first, all reasonably informed contractors exercising ordinary care can understand their exact significance and interpret them in the same way, and, secondly, the contracting authority is able to ascertain whether the tenders submitted satisfy the criteria applying to the relevant contract.