Abstract

This court judgment deserves attention and comment for several reasons. It is one of the first statements by the Court regarding legal issues in public procurement and competition law proceedings. The issue seems particularly interesting, as it concerns the beginning of the maximum period of exclusion of a contractor from competing for contracts in a situation where the competition authority has found that the contractor participated in a bid-rigging arrangement. The adopted interpretation is undoubtedly significant for the doctrine and the practice of public procurement. In particular, between 2011 and 2019, the president of the Polish Competition Authority – UOKiK –issued as many as 55 decisions on tender collusion. For some time, a separate Department for Counteracting Tender Collusion was successfully operating within UOKiK’s organisational structure. In a recently published European Commission Communication entitled “Notice on tools for fighting collusion in tenders and guidelines for exclusion grounds related to collusion”, it is indicated that in situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the needs of public authorities justify the prompt award of numerous healthcare contracts, thereby increasing the risk of collusion. This communication also called for increased cooperation and information exchange between competition authorities and public procurement entities. As a result, increasingly complex legal issues may arise from the interaction between the public procurement and competition regimes.