Some thoughts on recent ECJ case law at ERA's annual conference on European Procurement Law

One more year, it has been a pleasure to participate in ERA's Annual Conference on European Public Procurement Law, and to exchange views with practitioners and policy-makers about recent developments and future challenges in this important area of EU economic law. It has also been an honour to contribute to the celebrations of ERA's 25 years of good work towards improving our knowledge of EU law.

This year, I was invited to provide some critical remarks on recent case law of the ECJ in some areas of practical relevance and, in particular, on case law concerning:

1. the rules on subcontracting and teaming or consortium bidding,
2. the rules on contract modification and termination; and
3. the scope of the concessions Directive.

My main remarks concentrated on

1. the difficulties of keeping the right balance between preserving the maximum possible procedural flexibility to ensure participation in tenders by groupings of economic operators (loosely defined) and allowing the contracting authority to scrutinise the technical and economic standing of joint bidders--while ensuring that competition rules are respected and the supreme and directly effective provisions of the TFEU (notably Art 101) are enforced at all levels of procurement activity;
2. the challenges in adapting a commercially-oriented approach to the adjudication of disputes at execution phase where the risks of discriminatory or anti-competitive procurement are largely absent; and
3. the limited advances made so far in fine tuning the definition of a concession contract, in particular in cases not involving relatively straightforward instances of improper use of the label 'concession' (such as using it to refer to licences or authorisations), or not involving the need to differentiate the scope of application of the rules in what is now Dir 2014/23 and competing frameworks, such as the Services Directive or the Transport Regulation.

The slides I used appear below. The presentation was recorded and will soon be available (keep an eye on @how2crackanut for details).

Impact of the ECJ’s jurisprudence in practice (ERA March 2017) from Albert Sanchez Graells

ECJ confirms that procurement rules do not apply to licences or authorisations (“concessions”) for betting and gambling services (C-225/15)

In its Judgment of 8 September 2016 in Politanò, C-225/15, EU:C:2016:645, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) followed the Opinion of Advocate General Wahl (see here) and confirmed that the 2004 procurement rules were not applicable to a public contest for the award of concessions (ie licences or authorisations) for the provision of betting and gambling services to the public.

The ECJ did not address AG Wahl’s obiter comments concerning the theoretical applicability of the 2014 Concessions Directive to an equivalent case but, in my view, the stress put by the ECJ in the analysis of the essential elements of remuneration and risk transfer in the definition of a (services) concession indicates that the ECJ would have likely ruled against that applicability.

In the Politanò Judgment, the ECJ addressed the question whether Directive 2004/18 was applicable to a call for tenders for the grant of “concessions” in the field of betting and gambling by focusing on the remuneration element that is necessary for the existence of a public contract.

After distinguishing public service contracts from services concessions by reference to the different modalities of remuneration they imply and the different risk structure that underlies those modalities of remuneration (paras 30 to 31), the ECJ focused on the plain and simple fact that ‘in the case in the main proceedings, the service provider receives no remuneration from the contracting authority and bears the entire risk associated with the activity of collecting and transmitting bets’ (para 32, emphasis added).

This led the ECJ to conclude that such “concessions” could not ‘be classified as a public contract for services within the meaning of … Directive 2004/18’ (para 33), which leaves them outside of its scope of application (para 34). The ECJ does not make an equivalent explicit conclusion concerning the classification of those “concessions” for the provision of betting and gambling services as services concessions because those were explicitly excluded from the scope of application of Directive 2004/18 in any case (para 29).

In my view, however, that conclusion would be unavoidable in an equivalent case that took place after the entry into force of Directive 2014/23 because its Art 5(1)(b) defines a services concession in the following terms:

a contract for pecuniary interest concluded in writing by means of which one or more contracting authorities or contracting entities entrust the provision and the management of services other than the execution of works ... to one or more economic operators, the consideration of which consists either solely in the right to exploit the services that are the subject of the contract or in that right together with payment (emphasis added).

Importantly, Art 5(1) in fine of Directive 2014/23 also requires that

The award of a works or services concession shall involve the transfer to the concessionaire of an operating risk in exploiting those works or services encompassing demand or supply risk or both ... (emphasis added).

Taking all of this into account, and on the basis of the same factual finding that in the case of licences or authorisations for the provision of betting and gambling services (typically) ‘the service provider receives no remuneration from the contracting authority and bears the entire risk associated with the activity of collecting and transmitting bets’ and, possibly more importantly, the fact that 'the "service" under analysis [is] not provided on behalf of the contracting authority' (see Opinion of AG Wahl, para 51), the only possible conclusion is that Directive 2014/23 is equally inapplicable to a call for tenders for the grant of “concessions” in the field of betting and gambling.

This simple and unsurprising conclusion is slightly more interesting when taken together with the also recent Judgment in Promoimpresa (see here) because, together, they provide some additional clarity on the limits of application (or rather, outright inapplicability) of public procurement rules to “concessions” in name that are actually regulatory systems of licences or authorisations to carry out specific economic activities, whether they involve the use of public assets (generally, parts of the public domain) or not.

CJEU clarifies scope of application of concessions directive and services directive, and confirms their mutual exclusivity (C-458/14)

In its Judgment of 14 July 2016 in Promoimpresa, C-458/14, EU:C:2016:558, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling concerned with the interaction between the EU public procurement rules and the Services Directive (Dir 2006/123/EC) In particular, Promoimpresa is concerned with the potential interaction between the EU public procurement and the rules of the Services Directive (Art 12) for the allocation of authorisations to carry out a given economic activity when only a limited number of authorisations is available due to the scarcity of available natural resources or technical capacity.

The case touches upon similar issues as the ongoing litigation on whether the EU procurement rules area applicable to the granting of betting licences (see Politano’, C-225/15, here), which are however excluded from the scope of the Services Directive (Art 2).

Thus, the Promoimpresa Judgment is relevant in the area of services concessions, broadly and loosely understood [on this, for background, see GS Ølykke, 'Is the granting of special and exclusive rights subject to the principles applicable to the award of concessions? Recent developments in case law and their implications for one of the last sanctuaries of protectionism' (2014) 23(1) Public Procurement Law Review 1; and CJ Wolswinkel, 'From public contracts to limited authorisations and vice versa: Exploring the EU Court’s corollary approach on award procedures, Public Procurement Law Review' (2015) 24(5) Public Procurement Law Review 137].

In Promoimpresa, the legal dispute arose from Italian decisions not to renew a pre-existing "concession" (rectius, exclusive right or authorisation) for the occupancy and management of State-owned land, and to subject the award of lakeside "concessions" (idem) to a comparative selection procedure (C-458/14, para 2). Thus, the case concerns 'concessions granted by public authorities of State-owned maritime and lakeside property relating to the exploitation of State land for tourist and leisure-oriented business activities' (para 40). The use of the term "concession" to refer to this type of authorisations could be problematic in theory, as it could give rise to doubts as to the applicability of the Services Directive, the Concessions Directive (Dir 2014/23/EU), or both to their award. Luckily, though, this is an issue of coordination of the scope of application of these legal instruments that both address explicitly.

Recital 57 of the Services Directive states that ‘The provisions of this Directive relating to authorisation schemes should concern cases where the access to or exercise of a service activity by operators requires a decision by a competent authority. This concerns neither decisions by competent authorities to set up a public or private entity for the provision of a particular service nor the conclusion of contracts by competent authorities for the provision of a particular service which is governed by rules on public procurement, since this Directive does not deal with rules on public procurement’ (emphasis added).

From a complementary perspective, Recital 15 of Concessions Directive is also clear in stating that ‘… Certain agreements having as their object the right of an economic operator to exploit certain public domains or resources under private or public law, such as land or any public property, in particular in the maritime, inland ports or airports sector, whereby the State or contracting authority or contracting entity establishes only general conditions for their use without procuring specific works or services, should not qualify as concessions within the meaning of this Directive. This is normally the case with public domain or land lease contracts which generally contain terms concerning entry into possession by the tenant, the use to which the property is to be put, the obligations of the landlord and tenant regarding the maintenance of the property, the duration of the lease and the giving up of possession to the landlord, the rent and the incidental charges to be paid by the tenant’ (emphasis added).

In the Promoimpresa Judgment, in a ruling that should come as no surprise, the CJEU confirmed the mutual exclusivity of the Services Directive and the Concessions Directive in the following terms:

45 ... the provisions of [the Services Directive] relating to authorisation schemes cannot apply to concessions of public services capable, inter alia, of falling within the scope of [the Concessions Directive].

46      ... a services concession is characterised, inter alia, by a situation in which the right to operate a particular service is transferred by the contracting authority to the concessionaire and that the latter enjoys, in the framework of the contract which has been concluded, a certain economic freedom to determine the conditions under which that right is exercised and, in addition, is, to a large extent, exposed to the risks of operating the service (see, to that effect, judgment of 11 June 2009 in Hans & Christophorus Oymanns, C‑300/07, EU:C:2009:358, paragraph 71).

47      However, in the cases in the main proceedings ... the concessions do not concern the provision of a particular service by the contracting entity, but an authorisation to exercise an economic activity on State-owned land. It follows that the concessions at issue in the main proceedings do not fall within the category of service concessions (see, by analogy, judgment of 14 November 2013 in Belgacom, C‑221/12, EU:C:2013:736, paragraphs 26 to 28) (C-458/14, paras 45-47).

To be sure, the wording of some parts of the Promoimpresa Judgment could be clearer--e.g., paragraph [47], where it seems to imply that contracting authorities provide services under a services concession, while the whole point of those concessions is for the concessionaire to provide and manage those services on behalf of, or upon the entrustment of the contracting authority [see definition of services concession in Art 5(1)(b) of the Concessions Directive]. However, the functional criterion of mutual exclusivity of the Services Directive and the Concessions Directive seems now clear enough and it can be welcome that this is now the explicit interpretation of the CJEU, rather than merely indicative considerations in the recitals of both directives.

Do public procurement rules apply to "concessions" (rectius, licences or authorisations) for betting and gambling services? (C-225/15)

In his Opinion of 16 June 2016 in case Politano’, C-225/15, EU:C:2016:456 (not available in English), Advocate General Wahl had to assess the applicability of Directive 2004/18 on public procurement, and in particular its Art 47 on economic and financial standing requirements, to a public contest for the award of concessions (ie licences or authorisations) for the provision of betting and gambling services.

In his Opinion, and in very streamlined terms, AG Wahl considered that Art 47 Dir 2004/18 was not applicable to the tendering of such 'concessions' for the provision of betting and gambling services for the following reasons:

a concession for the provision of betting services, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, is not a public service contract within the meaning of Article 1, paragraph 2, point d) of Directive 2004/18. Not only is the "service" under analysis not provided on behalf of the contracting authority but, additionally, the economic operators that tender for such concessions are not remunerated by public funds. Also, the concessionaire bears the entire risk associated with the exercise of the activity of collecting and transmitting bets (para 51, own translation from Spanish).

This analysis is correct. However, it is then surprising that AG Wahl embarks on some considerations about the possible applicability of Art 38(1) of Directive 2014/23 on concession contracts to the award of such concessions (rectius, licences or authorisations) for the provision of betting and gambling services (para 52). It seems clear to me that, exactly for the same reasons established in para 51, Dir 2014/23 would not be applicable. Not least because its Art 5(1)(b) defines a services concession in the following terms:

a contract for pecuniary interest concluded in writing by means of which one or more contracting authorities or contracting entities entrust the provision and the management of services other than the execution of works ... to one or more economic operators, the consideration of which consists either solely in the right to exploit the services that are the subject of the contract or in that right together with payment.

Put simply, the fact that 'the "service" under analysis [is] not provided on behalf of the contracting authority' excludes this type of concession (rectius, authorisation or licence) from the scope of application of Dir 2014/23. Consequently, it may have been better for AG Wahl to completely avoid the consideration of Dir 2014/23 (it was clearly not applicable to the facts of the case anyway) and not provide such obiter comments, which can create confusion.

Indeed, this is an area where there is a floating lack of clarity [for general discussion and analysis, see GS Ølykke, 'Is the granting of special and exclusive rights subject to the principles applicable to the award of concessions? Recent developments in case law and their implications for one of the last sanctuaries of protectionism' (2014) 23(1) Public Procurement Law Review 1-20; CJ Wolswinkel, 'From public contracts to limited authorisations and vice versa: Exploring the EU Court’s corollary approach on award procedures' (2015) 24(5) Public Procurement Law Review 137-163; and I Herrera Anchustegui, 'EFTA Court case E-24/13 Casino Admiral AG v Wolfgang Egger: the obligation of transparency and consequences of its breach when awarding service concessions' (2015) 24(1) Public Procurement Law Review NA1-NA9].

It is relevant to note that Art 10(9) Dir 2014/23 explicitly excludes lottery concessions from the coverage of the Directive, but it does not go as far as preempting the coverage of any betting or gambling services in case they are actually structured in the form of a concession [as defined in Art 5(1)(b)]. The creation of this exclusion was controversial because the European Commission had not included it in its original proposal back in 2011.

The following are my comments to the creation of this exclusion in the forthcoming Brussels Commentary on EU Public Procurement Law, M Steinicke & PL Vesterdorf (eds) (Beck, 2016).

01. This exclusion was lacking in the 2011 proposal and was introduced as a result of the Amendments proposed by the European Parliament (see Amendments 19 and 110). The justification provided for this exclusion was as follows: “Gaming has, in addition, been excluded on account of the highly specific nature of the activities concerned and the need to ensure that Member States can continue to exercise oversight in order to pursue aims in the general interest (combating illegal gambling, fraud, and money laundering; preventing addiction). If gaming were subject to the rules of the directive, Member States would be deprived of flexibility and consequently impeded in their ability to act. National lotteries and similar games will therefore be excluded.” The text of the proposed new recital [proposed as (13a) and now numbered as (35)] and article [proposed as Article 8(5a) and now in Article 10(9)] are different than the ones finally adopted. In the final version, it is clear(er) that the exclusive right on the basis of which the concession is granted must comply with EU law and meet certain minimum requirements. Indeed, the proposed Amendment by the European Parliament would have excluded “service concessions for gambling activities involving a financial risk through investing a sum of money in games of chance (that is to say lotteries or betting), awarded to one or more bodies by one or more Member States on the basis of exclusive rights granted pursuant to applicable national laws, regulations or administrative provisions in accordance with the Treaties”. By contrast, Article 10(9) of the Concessions Directive excludes “service concessions for lottery services, which are covered by CPV code 92351100-7, awarded by a Member State to an economic operator on the basis of an exclusive right. For the purpose of this paragraph, the notion of exclusive right does not cover exclusive rights as referred to in Article 7(2). The grant of such an exclusive right shall be subject to publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.” The main differences seem to be the more clearly limited scope of the exemption by reference to the CPV code and the requirement of EU-wide publication of the exclusive right [which is an improper exclusive right as it must not meet the requirements of the definition in Article 5(10)].

02. As briefly indicated by the European Commission in its factsheet “Concessions: Excluded concessions”, the purpose of this exclusion is to cover lottery services and, more precisely

“Concessions for lottery operating services awarded on the basis of a prior exclusive right which has been granted pursuant to applicable national laws, regulations or administrative provisions in accordance with the Treaties are not covered.

However, in other cases, gambling activities are covered by the Directive when they assume the form of concession contracts (e.g. casino concessions). Gambling activities pursued on the basis of authorisations/licences are not covered.”

Under this interpretation, this specific exclusion is also redundant, as it could have been comprised under the more general exclusion of Article 10(1)—except for the cases where the special or exclusive rights are not awarded following transparent procedures based on objective, proportionate and non-discriminatory criteria, which seems to be the area of regulatory competence that Member States want to protect. Indeed, it should be acknowledged that Member States retain almost unlimited discretion to maintain gambling monopolies in their jurisdictions and that, consequently, the ECJ is likely to interpret this exclusion generously [see Case C-203/08 Sporting Exchange (Betfair) [2010] ECR I-04695]. In that regard, it could well be that the European Commission is interpreting the exclusion in an exceedingly restrictive manner because, in fact, EU law imposes very limited constraints on Member States regulation of gambling (on the basis of directly awarded exclusive rights). Hence, the exclusion of lottery services concessions should come as no surprise and the general situation seems to clearly be that, unless Member States reach a common understanding on the way gambling and lotteries should be regulated, this is an area of the internal market where cross-border competition and regulatory harmonisation cannot be realistically expected any time soon.

In view of AG Wahl's Opinion in Politano’, it may be worth stressing that, in my view, public procurement rules (and Dir 2014/23 in particular) will not be relevant for cases involving authorisations/licences for the provision of betting and gambling services (other than if applied by analogy or used as a benchmark to assess the openness, transparency and soundness of the procedure for their allocation under the general rules on freedom of provision of services and freedom of establishment). Mostly, because the provision of those services will not be 'on behalf of the contracting authority'. The only situation where this seems likely to happen involves lottery monopolies, but these benefit from the explicit exclusion in Art 10(9) Dir 2014/23.

Ultimately, and this seems to be a running topic in recent decisions, the irrelevance of Dir 2014/23 is justified because where the State is authorising the provision of specific services and thus regulating that market by means of a specific system of authorisations or licences (which should stop being called concessions for clarity), there is no procurement.

Direct award of concession contracts to holders of exclusive rights: the puzzle of Art 10(1) Dir 2014/23

I have been exchanging views with colleagues of the University of Turin on the justification, scope and implications of Art 10(1) of the Concessions Directive (2014/23). This is a rather complex provision that has hidden links with a number of equivalent provisions in the Public Sector Directive (2014/24) and the Utilities Directive (2014/25). 

It has taken us some time to clarify these issues--and I am actually not a 100% sure that we have finished with that conversation. Given that the publication where all this debate and analysis will be reflected will take some to be available, I thought it useful to upload here my draft. Comments will be most welcome.

Article 10(1) of the Concessions Directive states: 

This Directive shall not apply to services concessions awarded to a contracting authority or to a contracting entity as referred to in point (a) of Article 7(1) or to an association thereof on the basis of an exclusive right.

This Directive shall not apply to services concessions awarded to an economic operator on the basis of an exclusive right which has been granted in accordance with the TFEU and Union legal acts laying down common rules on access to the market applicable to activities referred to in Annex II.

My views are set out below.

10.1. Concessions awarded on the basis of exclusive rights

The exclusion in Article 10(1) for concessions awarded on the basis of exclusive rights is functionally equivalent to those in Article 11 of the Public Sector Directive and Article 22 of the Utilities Directive for services contracts. As briefly indicated by the European Commission in its factsheet “Concessions: Excluded concessions”, the purpose of this exclusion is to cover “Concessions awarded by (sic, to?) public authorities as well as contracting entities other than public undertakings and private entities enjoying of exclusive rights, both in the ‘classic’ and ‘utilities’ sectors.” However, the drafting of the exclusion for services concessions diverges from those applicable to services contracts in some respects, which aim to accommodate the requirements of both other directives

Firstly, it should be taken into account that Recital (32) of the Concessions Directive indicates that 

In certain cases, a given contracting authority or contracting entity which is a State, regional or local authority or body governed by public law or a given association thereof might be the sole source for a given service, for the provision of which it enjoys an exclusive right pursuant to national laws, regulations or published administrative provisions which are compatible with the TFEU. It should be clarified that in those situations a contracting authority or contracting entity as referred to in this recital or association thereof may award concessions to such bodies without this Directive being applied.”

This results in the exclusion in the first paragraph of Article 10(1) being applied to “services concessions awarded to a contracting authority or to a contracting entity as referred to in point (a) of Article 7(1) or to an association thereof on the basis of an exclusive right”. This drafting deviates from that of Article 11 of the Public Sector Directive and Article 22 of the Utilities Directive for services contracts. Focussing on the drafting of Article 11 of the Public Sector Directive, it is worth stressing that, due to the dual treatment of contracting authorities in the Concessions Directive as ‘proper’ contracting authorities (under Article 6) and as contracting entities by virtue of the activity in which they engage [under Article 7(1)(a)], the first paragraph of Article 10(1) of the Concessions Directive does not only mention contracting authorities, but also contracting entities “as referred to in point (a) of Article 7(1)”. However, this does not extend the personal scope of the exclusion as compared with that in Article 11 of the Public Sector Directive or that in Article 22 of the Utilities Directive. 

 

Still in that comparison, it is worth mentioning that the Concessions Directive does not include the requirement that the exclusive rights of the contracting authorities (proper and improper) are enjoyed “pursuant to a law, regulation or published administrative provision which is compatible with the TFEU”. However, given that the requirement is included in the definition of exclusive right in Article 5(10) of the Concessions Directive (“‘exclusive right’ means a right granted by a competent authority of a Member State by means of any law, regulation or published administrative provision which is compatible with the Treaties…”), this does not actually create a difference in treatment of the exclusion in the Public Sector and the Utilities Directives either.

 

Turning to the exclusion in the second paragraph of Article 10(1) of the Concessions Directive, which makes it inapplicable to services concessions awarded to economic operators that hold exclusive rights “granted in accordance with the TFEU and Union legal acts laying down common rules on access to the market applicable to activities referred to in Annex II”, it seems clear that this is an exclusion that aims to coordinate the Concessions Directive with sectoral regulation adopted in compliance with the existing EU framework.

This seems clear from Recital (33), which foresees that:

It is also appropriate to exclude from the scope of this Directive certain services concessions awarded to economic operators, where they are awarded on the basis of an exclusive right which that operator enjoys under national laws, regulations or published administrative provisions and which has been granted in accordance with the TFEU and Union acts laying down common rules on access to the market applicable to activities referred to in Annex II, since such exclusive right makes it impossible to follow a competitive procedure for the award. By way of derogation and without prejudice to the legal consequences of the general exclusion from the scope of this Directive, concessions as referred to in the second subparagraph of Article 10(1) should be subject to the obligation to publish a concession award notice in view of ensuring basic transparency unless the conditions of such transparency are provided for in sectoral legislation. In order to reinforce transparency, where a Member State grants an exclusive right to an economic operator for the exercise of one of the activities referred to in Annex II, it should inform the Commission thereof.

As briefly indicated by the European Commission in its factsheet “Concessions: Excluded concessions”, the purpose of this exclusion is to cover

Concessions awarded to an economic operator on the basis of an exclusive right

This exclusion applies only to service concessions awarded to economic operators which are active in the ‘utilities’ sector. It is subject to two conditions:

i) The economic operator has a prior exclusive right to provide the services that are the subject of the concession;

ii) This right was granted under a published national law or administrative act in accordance with the Treaty and with EU acts that lay down common rules on access to the market applicable to any of the ‘utilities’ activities (e.g. concessions in the electricity sector covered by Directive 2003/54/EC, modified by Directive 2009/72/EC and gas concessions covered by Directive 2009/73/EC).

Indeed, the coordination with sectoral regulation takes place both at the stage of definition of the contracting entities covered by the Concessions Directive [see Article 7 of the Concessions Directive, and Article 4(3) of the Utilities Directive] and at this stage of exclusion of the concessions awarded to certain types of entities. 

Firstly, Recital (22) of the Concessions Directive offers some clarification in that regard: 

entities which are neither contracting entities pursuant to point (a) of Article 7(1) nor public undertakings are subject to [the Concessions Directive] only to the extent that they exercise one of the activities covered on the basis of such rights. However, they will not be considered to be contracting entities if such rights have been granted by means of a procedure based on objective criteria, in particular pursuant to Union legislation, and for which adequate publicity has been ensured. That legislation should include Directive 2009/73/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, Directive 2009/72/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, Directive 97/67/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, Directive 94/22/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council. It should also be clarified that that listing of legislation is not exhaustive and that rights in any form, which have been granted by means of other procedures based on objective criteria and for which adequate publicity has been ensured are not relevant for the purposes of determining the contracting entities covered by this Directive.

This implies that the granting of concessions to these entities will not be covered by the first paragraph of Article 10(1), as the way in which their rights had been granted excludes them from the definition of contracting entity for these purposes.

However, secondly, this situation would result in a more limited possibility to directly award contracts on the basis of exclusive rights under the Concessions Directive than under the Public Sector and the Utilities Directives. It should be borne in mind that Article 32(2)(b)(iii) of the Public Sector Directive allows for the use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication if it is necessary for the protection of exclusive rights, and always provided that no reasonable alternative or substitute exists and the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement. Article 50(c)(iii) of the Utilities Directive contains the same provision regarding the equivalent negotiated procedure without prior call for competition. Hence, under those sets of rules, the direct award of a contract to an economic operator on the basis of an exclusive right is still possible, even if not covered by Article 11 of the Public Sector Directive or Article 22 of the Utilities Directive. With the inclusion of the second paragraph of Article 10(1) Concessions Directive, this possibility is accommodated through an exclusion of the application of the Directive, with the only exception of the reinstatement of transparency obligations similar to those required by Articles 32(2)(b)(iii) of the Public Sector Directive and 50(c)(iii) of the Utilities Directive by means of Article 10(2) of the Concessions Directive.

The ultimate justification for this exclusion is, consequently, of a seemingly double nature. On the one hand, it seems clear that the interest of potential tenderers in obtaining the concession had already been protected by substantially equivalent means at the stage of granting of the exclusive right that triggers the exclusion under the second paragraph of Article 10(1)  of the Concessions Directive and, consequently, there is no need to reopen the competition at this stage. On the other hand, it serves the purpose of creating a functional equivalent to Articles 32(2)(b)(iii) of the Public Sector Directive and 50(c)(iii) of the Utilities Directive in order to allow for the direct award of concession contracts to holders of exclusive rights.

Some thoughts on a paper on the Concessions Directive and competition law [Farley-Pourbaix, (2015) JECLAP 6(1): 15-25]

Martin Farley and Nicolas Pourbaix have recently published a paper on the interaction between competition and public procurement law in light of the rules of new Directive 2014/23 on concession contracts. The paper is 'The EU Concessions Directive: Building (Toll) Bridges between Competition Law and Public Procurement?' (2015) 6(1) Journal of European Competition Law & Practice  15-25. 

The paper is extremely thinly researched in an area that is generating a significant amount of scholarly commentary and, as such, it is rather disappointing because the authors seem to be (re)discovering powder by emphasising the interaction between procurement and competition law rules. However, some of the main points the authors make in relation to the pre-existing case law of the CJEU are worth considering.

Firstly, they stress the practical complications that the open-ended definition of concession creates, particularly in terms of the difficulty of assessing when the transfer of risks to the concessionaire suffices to be covered by Directive 2014/23 instead of Directive 2014/24 or Directive 2014/25 [for discussion, see C Risvig Hansen, Contracts not covered or not fully covered by the Public Sector Directive (Copenhagen, DJOF, 2012)76-102; A Sanchez-Graells, 'What Need and Logic for a New Directive on Concessions, Particularly Regarding the Issue of their Economic Balance?' (2012) 2 European Public Private Partnership Law Review 94-104; and R Craven, 'The EU's 2014 Concessions Directive’ (2014) 23 Public Procurement Law Review 188-200].

Secondly, they explore the applicability of Art 101 TFEU to bidders that opt to team up or bid jointly for concession contracts. Their remarks are interesting and topical, as the recent publication of the 'Consortium Bidding' guidelines by the Irish Competition and Consumer Protection Commission evidences. I found their warning on the need to limit the exchanges of information between consortium partners particularly relevant (pp. 19-20), as joint participation in selected procurement projects could be the conduit for cartelising behaviour and this is an issue that requires careful consideration.

Thirdly, they revisit the never-ending discussion on the exclusion of contracting authorities from the concept of undertaking for the purposes of the application of (EU) competition law on the basis of the FENIN-SELEX line of case law [FENIN v Commission, C-205/03, EU:C:2006:453; and Selex v Commission, C-113/07, EU:C:2009:191] [for discussion, see A Sanchez-Graells, 'Distortions of Competition Generated by the Public (Power) Buyer: A Perceived Gap in EC Competition Law and Proposals to Bridge It' (2009) University of Oxford, Center for Competition Law and Policy, CCLP (L). 23]. 

On this point, it is interesting to see how Farley and Pourbaix stress that utilities concessions may trigger the application of competition law because, almost by definition, the contracting entity will be engaged in 'downstream' economic activities. Their discussion of the Luton Airport case is certainly informative [Arriva the Shires Ltd v London Luton Airport Operations Ltd [2014] EWHC 64 (Ch)].

This may be a point to take into consideration in the future to (possibly) limit the FENIN-SELEX exemption in case contracting authorities outside the utilities sector engage in (partial) downstream economic activity, which is likely to be the case of some in-house or public-public cooperation arrangements, which can now offer up to 20% of their supplies or services in the 'private market' under the rules of Directive 2014/24. This would be particularly easy on the basis of the 'severability' of activities for the purposes of competition law [Aéroports de Paris v Commission, C‑82/01, EU:C:2002:617], which in my view would be a most welcome development of this area of the law.

Finally, Farley and Pourbaix focus on specific competition law aspects of the new EU Concessions Directive. Of the issues they mention (other than the duration of the concession contract), the most interesting are the possibility to exclude infringers of competition law (on which see the recent case law of the CJEU here), and the interaction between State aid rules and the modification of concession contracts [for discussion, see A Sanchez-Graells, 'Public Procurement and State Aid: Reopening the Debate?' (2012) 21(6) Public Procurement Law Review 205-212]. 

On the issue of exclusion, the paper stresses burden of proof difficulties and advocates for a careful enforcement of the power to exclude undertakings suspected of competition violations, and points (without mentioning) at corporate human rights such as the presumption of innocence, which would have deserved more detailed consideration [for general discussion, see A Sanchez-Graells and F Marcos, '"Human Rights" Protection for Corporate Antitrust Defendants: Are We Not Going Overboard?' (2014) University of Leicester School of Law Research Paper No. 14-04]. 

On the issue of State aid being (implicitly) granted as a result of a modification of a contract during its term, the paper emphasises that the increased flexibility in the choice of procedures and the possibility to modify the contract (potentially without value limit, despite the stress on 50% that Farley and Pourbaix wrongly put in p. 24-25) in a relatively generous array of cases restricts the 'Altmark' presumption and requires a substantive assessment of the conditions of the contract [something already advocated for in A Sanchez-Graells, Public procurement and the EU competition rules (Oxford, Hart, 2011) 118-121 and, in more detail, in ibid, 'The Commission’s Modernization Agenda for Procurement and SGEI', in E Szyszczak & J van de Gronden (eds) Financing SGEIs: State Aid. Reform and Modernisation, Legal Issues of Services of General Interest Series (The Hague, TMC Asser Press / Springer, 2012) 161-181].

A point of contention, though, refers to the treatment of concession contracts as conduits for State aid. Farley and Pourbaix consider that:

Contracting Authorities may be able to take a certain amount of comfort from the fact that many concessions may not qualify as State aid in any event, on the basis that the remuneration was not granted through State resources. This will at least be the case in those situations where the concessionaire is remunerated entirely by third parties. Following the CJEU’s ruling in PreussenElektra [PreussenElektra, C-379/98, ECLI:EU:C:2001:160] this will still be the case even if the State sets the price that third parties need to pay for the relevant goods or services. (P. 24).

Even if they indicate that mixed arrangements which include some sort of subsidy could erode this possibility to duck State aid rules, I think that they present the situation in a way that excessively narrows down their application. Indeed, on that point, it may worth stressing that the CJEU has relatively recently adopted a less formalistic approach and considered that certain aspects of public control over third party revenue (which are common to concession contracts) may trigger the dis-application of the PreussenElektra exception (see comment here). 

In particular, in Vent De Colère and Others, C-262/12, EU:C:2013:851, the CJEU found that:

Article 107(1) TFEU must be interpreted as meaning that a mechanism for offsetting in full the additional costs imposed on undertakings [...] that is financed by all final consumers [...] constitutes an intervention through State resources (C-262/12, para 37).

Hence, even decisions concerning authorizations to raise user fees (without offering any additional public support or implying any extension of the length of the concession) may trigger State aid application, which is a case most concession contracts usually contemplate. Hence, the interaction between the prohibition of State aid in Art 107(1) TFEU and the rules on modification of concession contracts in Directive 2014/23 is more intense than Farley and Pourbaix's paper presents.

Overall, then, the paper is not groundbreaking and, if the existing literature had been researched, it would probably have been of a higher academic interest (as it is published, though, it certainly is oriented to practitioners) and could possibly have reached a deeper level of analysis. In any case, given the novelty of Directive 2014/23, Farley and Pourbaix's paper can certainly raise awareness of the important issues they mention.

The new Directive on Concessions is basically unnecessary, but creates red tape, duplication & legal uncertainty (Dir 2014/23)

I have been working on the preparation of a commentary to the first part of the new Directive 2014/23 on the award of concession contracts [OJ L 94, 28/03/2014, p. 1–64] and have realised that, unfortunately, it has indeed become a basically unnecessary piece of EU legislation that creates significant red tape and muddles an already complicated area of EU Economic Law.

Unfortunately, as I anticipated [What Need and Logic for a New Directive on Concessions, Particularly Regarding the Issue of Their Economic Balance? (2012) European Procurement & Public Private Partnership Law Review 2/2012: pp. 94-104], most of the general provisions of Directive 2014/23 are a copy (or a 'Frankenstein copy') of provisions already available in other procurement Directives and, mainly, in Directive 2014/24 on public sector procurement. Such a duplication makes me think that the EU legislator would indeed have been better off by just including a limited set of specific provisions dealing with concession contracts within Directive 2014/24. By not doing so, it has created unnecessary duplication and complication.

As clear evidence of the basic unnecessity of Directive 2014/23, suffice it to stress that only 10 of its first 29 articles include specific rules for concession contracts (and, only 5 articles of those 10 are exclusively relevant for concession contracts, while the other 5 are slight modifications of general rules). All other articles are simply a repetition of provisions of other Directives. The table below clarifies this assessment. Hopefully Member States will take this significant duplication into account and will adopt a sensible (unified) approach in the transposition of Directives 2014/23, 2014/24 and 2014/25 to their domestic legal systems before April 2016, avoiding unnecessary repetitions.

 

 

CJEU kicks new #concessions Directive in the shins (C-388/12)

In its Judgment of 14 November 2013 in case C-388/12 Comune di Ancona, the CJEU has put forward an argument for the existence of cross-border interest in the award of (public service) concession contracts that openly challenges the quantitative rationale followed by the planned new Directive on Concessions.

The new Directive on Concessions is premised on the basis that cross-border interest will (only?) exist where the value of the contract is above €5 million, calculated as the estimated total turnover of the concessionaire generated over the duration of the contract, net of VAT (art 6). This is clearly indicated in its Recital (10):

This Directive should only apply to concession contracts whose value is equal to or greater than a certain threshold, which should reflect the clear cross-border interest of concessions to economic operators located in other Member States (emphasis added).

Such a quantitative approach to determining the existence of a cross-border interest may be difficult to reconcile with the qualitative approach followed by the CJEU in Comune de Ancona.

In the case at hand, a concession for the management of a European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)-supported portuary infrastructure (a slipway) was directly awarded by the Comune di Ancona to the local fishermen cooperative. The justification provided for the direct award was, rather simply, that 'it was not necessary, for the purposes of granting a concession for management of the slipway, to publish a call for tenders, in so far as no operators apart from the Pescatori cooperative were interested in that concession' (C-388/12 at para 16). In part, one of the reasons to consider that there would be no other bidder for the concession was that the concession was awarded

subject to a number of conditions. These included the obligation to pay the Comune di Ancona an annual charge calculated in such a way as to avoid substantial net revenue being generated for either the concession-granting authority or the concessionaire; a prohibition on modifying the implementation conditions of the operation eligible for funding; a prohibition on engaging in profit-making activity; the obligation to comply with all the applicable EU directives and standards; and the obligation to maintain the public-service function and intended use of the structure at issue. It was also stated that the slipway was to remain, in any event, the property of the Comune di Ancona (C-388/12 at para 12).

In a thoughtful and market-realistic approach to the existence of potential (corporate) interest in being awarded a non-revenue generating concession as a first step into a new market, the CJEU has clearly indicated that

50 [...] the Comune di Ancona has not invoked any objective facts capable of explaining the lack of any transparency in the award of the concession. On the contrary, it maintained that the concession was not liable to interest undertakings located in other Member States, in so far as the concession granted to the Pescatori cooperative was designed so as not to be capable of generating substantial net revenue for its beneficiary or an undue advantage for the latter or for the municipality.

51 However, the fact that a concession is not capable of generating substantial net revenue or an undue advantage for an undertaking or for a public body does not, in itself, support the inference that the concession is of no economic interest for undertakings located in Member States other than that of the contracting authority. In the context of an economic strategy to extend part of its activities to another Member State, an undertaking may take the tactical decision to seek the award in that State of a concession despite the fact that that concession is incapable as such of generating sufficient profit, since that opportunity could nevertheless enable the undertaking to establish itself on the market of that State and to make itself known there with a view to preparing its future expansion.

52 [...] in circumstances such as those of the case before the referring court, EU law does not preclude the award, without a call for tenders, of a public service concession relating to works, provided that that award is consistent with the principle of transparency, observance of which, without necessarily entailing an obligation to call for tenders, must make it possible for an undertaking located in the territory of a Member State other than that of the contracting authority to have access to appropriate information regarding that concession before it is awarded, so that, if that undertaking so wishes, it would be in a position to express its interest in obtaining that concession (C-388/12 at paras 50-52, emphasis added).

In my view, the argument used by the CJEU in para 51 of Comune di Ancona is sound in terms of business strategy and makes perfect sense. However, even if it focusses on 'net revenue' and the threshold of Art 6 of the future Concessions Directive only refers to 'total turnover' (hence, they are not in stark conflict, as the threshold may catch concessions with a high turnover but very low operational or commercial margins), the qualitative approach followed by the CJEU should trigger some red flags.

 

I find that this shows that the quantitative approach adopted by the future Directive on Concessions will not mark the end of the story in the ongoing discussion regarding the rules and requirements applicable to contracts not covered by the procurement Directives--and, more specifically, to services concessions. It seems to me that a dual legal regime will persist between 'Directive concessions' and 'Ancona concessions', where the CJEU will continue pointing out to the potential existence of cross-border interest for concessions with a value below €5mn (or in the excluded and preferential sectors, such as water or social services).

 

If that is so, the passing of the new Directive on Concessions will only have increased legal complexity in this area and should not be seen as a necessarily positive development [as discussed in A Sánchez Graells, 'What Need and Logic for a New Directive on Concessions, Particularly Regarding the Issue of Their Economic Balance?' (2012) European Public Private Partnerships Law Review 2: 94-104]. I guess that, once more, we will need to keep an eye on further developments of the CJEU case law.