ECJ confirms discretion to exclude tenderers for not updating self-certifications and points towards potential general obligation of sincere cooperation (C-178/16)

In its Judgment of 20 December 2017 in Impresa di Costruzioni Ing. E. Mantovani and RTI Mantovani e Guerrato, C-178/16, EU:C:2017:1000 (Mantovani e Guerrato), the Court of Justice (ECJ) declared the compatibility with the 2004 EU public procurement rules of a contracting authority's decision to exclude an economic operator that, having self-certified as not being affected by exclusion grounds, subsequently failed to update the contracting authority when one of its former directors' criminal conviction for invoice fraud became final. Remarkably, the exclusion was upheld despite the fact that the 'conviction had become final following [the economic operator's] own declarations [and despite the fact ...] that, in order to fully and effectively dissociate the company from [its director]’s actions, the latter was immediately removed from his management role ..., the management bodies of the company had been reorganised, [his] shares had been bought back and an action for damages had been brought against him' (para 11). Therefore, the exclusion was upheld despite an attempt at self-cleaning. 

In declaring the compatibility with EU procurement law of this strict approach in the exercise of discretionary exclusion powers, the ECJ largely followed the Opinion of AG Campos Sánchez-Bordona (discussed here, where more background on the case is provided) and, in my view, confirmed a welcome functional approach to the exercise of discretion to exclude economic operators on the grounds of evidence that the economic operator is guilty of grave professional misconduct, which renders its integrity questionable [Art 45(2)(d) Dir 2004/18 and now Art 57(4)(c) Dir 2014/24]. In my view, there are some relevant passages in the Mantovani e Guerrato Judgment that will be of importance in the assessment of self-cleaning claims under the 2014 rules, given the recognition of the possibility for Member States to create an overarching obligation of sincere cooperation with the contracting authority befalling upon economic operators under the 2004 rules--which may well carry over to the new provisions at EU level. The relevance of such recognition of a general obligation stems from its crucial role in the original exclusion decision, which was 'in essence, [based on the fact] that although, in the absence of a final judgment, Mantovani’s statement could not be classified as a "misrepresentation", the lack of timely notification of criminal proceedings concerning one of the [relevant] persons ... may constitute an infringement of the obligation of sincere cooperation with the contracting authority, and accordingly impede the full and effective dissociation from the person concerned' (para 12).

In my view, it is important to stress that the ECJ reaches its position after reiterating its general case law position that

... Article 45(2) of Directive 2004/18 does not provide for uniform application at EU level of the grounds of exclusion it mentions, since the Member States may choose not to apply those grounds of exclusion, or to incorporate them into national law with varying degrees of rigour according to legal, economic or social considerations prevailing at national level. In that context, Member States have the power to make the criteria laid down in Article 45(2) less onerous or more flexible ... Member States therefore enjoy some discretion in determining the requirements governing the application of the optional grounds for exclusion laid down in Article 45(2) of Directive 2004/18 (paras 31-32, references omitted).

And it is also important to stress that the ECJ finds the legal basis for the obligation of sincere cooperation not on the 2004 EU procurement rules, but on the domestic law of the Member State concerned (Italy):

... the Member State is entitled to ease the requirements governing the application of the optional grounds for exclusion and, thus, to waive the application of a ground for exclusion in the event of a dissociation between the tenderer and the conduct constituting an offence. In the present case, it is also entitled to determine the requirements governing that dissociation and to require, as Italian law does, that the tenderer inform the contracting authority of a conviction of its director, even if the conviction is not yet final.

The tendering company, which must meet those requirements, may submit all the evidence which, in its view, is evidence of such a dissociation.

If that dissociation cannot be proved to the satisfaction of the contracting authority, the necessary consequence is the application of the ground for exclusion.

... in a situation where the judgment relating to an offence concerning the professional conduct of the director of a tendering company is not yet final, Article 45(2)(d) of Directive 2004/18 may apply. That provision makes it possible to exclude a tendering company which has been found guilty of grave professional misconduct, established by any means which the contracting authorities can provide proof of (paras 41-44).

Even if the ECJ seems to incur in some imprecision in interpreting Italian law (which, as far as I can see, did not require the tenderer to inform the contracting authority of the non-final conviction of its former director, but rather to update or substitute the relevant self-certification once that conviction becomes final), it seems clear that it foresees the possibility for Member States to create an overarching obligation of sincere cooperation as part of the relevant self-cleaning requirements. Given that self-cleaning was not regulated by Dir 2004/18, this is the only legal basis that could have been used in the case. However, given the inclusion of explicit rules in Dir 2014/24, an argument can be made that the ratio of the Mantovani e Guerrato Judgment will carry over to the new EU self-cleaning regime.

Indeed, when the functional principle underlying the Mantovani e Guerrato Judgment is put in connection with the new rules in Article 57(6) of Dir 2014/24, the legal basis of such an overarching obligation may now be seen as having potentially shifted to the EU level. Indeed, it is important to stress that, as minimum requirements for the recognition of self-cleaning capable of excluding the application of exclusion grounds (both mandatory and discretionary), the second paragraph of Art 57(6) Dir 2014/24 requires that 'the economic operator shall prove that it has paid or undertaken to pay compensation in respect of any damage caused by the criminal offence or misconduct, clarified the facts and circumstances in a comprehensive manner by actively collaborating with the investigating authorities and taken concrete technical, organisational and personnel measures that are appropriate to prevent further criminal offences or misconduct' (emphasis added).

This comes to establish an 'EU obligation of sincere cooperation' that, even if it seems oriented towards the 'investigating authorities' (which does not seem to automatically cover the contracting authority itself), can easily be extended in the same functional terms required by Italian law on the basis of the logic in the Mantovani e Guerrato Judgment. Therefore, in my view, when assessing self-cleaning claims--and as a result of a joint interpretation of Art 57(4)(c) and Art 57(6)II Dir 2014/24 from the functional perspective of the Mantovani e Guerrato Judgment--contracting authorities will be on safe grounds if they decide to reject self-cleaning claims on the basis of a lack of update of on-going criminal and administrative investigations that are susceptible of nullifying the effectiveness of self-certifications submitted by the economic operators concerned.

A strange Scottish case on evaluation of tenders -- Boston Sci. Ltd v Common Service Agency [2016] CSOH 132

I find the recent Scottish case Boston Scientific Limited v The Common Service Agency [2016] CSOH 132 most confusing. This is a case of healthcare-related procurement whereby the Scottish NHS' central purchasing body, the Common Service Agency, was tendering framework contracts for the supply of certain types of medical equipment--for simplicity, pacemakers and implantable defibrillators.

The litigation concerned the applicable award criteria and the ensuing evaluation of the tender submitted by Boston Scientific Limited. Even if the case seems to be decided mainly on procedural grounds (the claimant, or pursuer in Scottish terminology, seemed to have been time-barred in raising a challenge against the published award criteria), it raises substantive issues that, in my view, should have been dealt with differently by the Court.

The tender had been advertised and the relevant invitation to tender (ITT) had published the applicable award criteria. For each of the lots in which the framework agreement was to be divided, the tenders would be assessed against a pass/fail criterion of essential features (ie mandatory technical specifications) and then evaluated on a 60:20:20 split of the maximum score of 100. The offered price would carry a 60% weight, whereas two quality criteria would carry 20% each: (a) the inclusion of certain defined desirable features and (b) the longevity of the devices.

The challenge was based on Boston Scientific's submission that the assessment of the longevity of the pacemakers must have been wrong. In a nutshell, Boston Scientific claimed that their position as market leaders and the existence of independent tests that demonstrated that their devices had a very long individual life led them to the conclusion that 'there must have been a failure to compare like with like because if there had not been such a failure [Boston Scientific] would have had the highest longevity scores' [para 15]. In short, the tenderer was not convinced that its competitors could (truthfully) have offered devices with a superior longevity.

Boston Scientific's submission of improper technical evaluation of the tenders is complicated by two additional factors. First, that tenderers had only been asked to declare (or self-certify) the longevity of their devices without providing any supporting evidence. Second, that the criteria applicable to the evaluation of the longevity component were not all that clear.

Self-certification of verifiable technical characteristics?

On the first issue, the complaint considers that the contracting authority was not allowed to include as award criteria elements based on pure self-declaration and which it intended not to verify. Indeed, the case seems peculiar because the Common Service Agency 'had stated clearly prior to the date for submission of tenders that supporting evidence was not sought.  It had protected itself in a different way by making clear that the framework agreement would include a clawback provision if battery life fell short of the figure submitted in a tender' [para 18].

This seems to me to be a peculiar way of conducting business because the longevity of devices that need to be implanted in the human body seems a rather important technical characteristic (as submitted by Boston Scientific, but dismissed by Lord Tyre in his Opinion, despite the relevance of this issue for the purposes of EU consumer law as discussed here), and the abrogation of the power to check compliance with technical specifications in this regard seems odd, regardless of the inclusion of financial penalties in the contract. The Judgment relies on two English precedents that would support the legality of relying on self-certification of compliance with contractual terms. Most importantly, it ignores the EU precedent in EVN and Wienstrom (C-448/01, EU:C:2003:651), to which one of the English cases refers, though. A reference to EVN paras [50]-[51] would have sufficed to quash the award procedure (I am thankful to Karen Wontner and Erik Plas for having raised this point in private correspondence).

First, Lord Tyre relies on Public Interest Lawyers v Legal Services Commission [2012] EWHC 3277 (Admin), Cranston J at para [64] to justify the acceptability of self-certification. However, in my view, this precedent is inapplicable here. First, because it concerned an on-going requirement to be discharged during the execution of the contract (ie an element closer to a contract performance clause than a technical requirement) but, most importantly, because in the previous paragraph of that speech Cranston J stressed that 

... the principle behind its decision was the need to ensure the equal treatment of tenderers through the objective and uniform application of the criteria in their assessment. The principle applies whether or not the public authority is able to verify the criteria. If it is able but omits to do so, that is as much a breach of the duty as if it sets criteria which cannot be verified. That is because the outcome may be an inequality of treatment of tenderers through the equal treatment of unequals, i.e. the equal treatment of those meeting and those failing to meet the tender requirements. After all, it is trite law that equality of treatment means not only treating like cases alike but unlike cases differently [at 63].

And this led Cranston J [at para 65] to insist on the need for robust verification where the contracting authority relies on self-certification by the tenderers. This is important in the context of the Boston Scientific v Common Service Agency dispute because, this case, 'Although it was accepted that in some cases a contracting authority might have a duty to validate information provided by a tenderer, this was not such a case. The defender did not have the means to verify independently the figures for longevity provided by tenderers' [para 18]. The issue here would have been whether this inability of independent verification (a) covered a complete lack of engagement with existing technical information and (b) was not attributable to the contracting authority itself and its decisions on how to organise the procurement procedure. Generally, one would expect that the entity running framework contracts for medical supplies has (or has access to) necessary technical knowledge in any case. Thus, this point of the case remains obscure and, in my opinion, shows excessive deference to the contracting authority.

Second, Lord Tyre relies on Parker Rhodes Hickmotts Solicitors v Legal Services Commission [2011] EWHC 1323 (Admin), McCombe J at paras [35]-[40], which in turn refers back to Public Interest Lawyers v Legal Services Commission. The difficulty with this second case is that its ratio rests on the construction or interpretation of the tender documentation, rather than an assessment of the requirements of the principle of non-discrimination of tenderers--which was the legal basis for the challenge in Boston Scientific. Importantly, in Parker Rhodes, the relevant part of the Judgment focuses on the fact that the Information for Applicants (IFA) document had not indicated how the contracting authority would proceed to verifying specific aspects of the offers, which the Court considered to cover the possibility of relying on self-certification.

To me, this makes both precedents irrelevant for (if not contradictory to) the assessment of the claims raised by Boston Scientific, which aimed to strike down the procurement process on the basis that the contracting authority had appended a significant weight to a criterion it actually decided not to verify at all. In my view, there are good arguments under the principle of good administration (Art 41 CFR) to demand that contracting authorities only evaluate what they can assess and, even more, that they do not claim not to be in a position to assess technical characteristics of the products they are buying--if nothing else, by reliance on the rules on test reports, certification and other means of proof (now under Art 44 Dir 2014/24/EU). 

Longevity, price, both or none of the above?

Additionally, and focusing on the point of the need to construct or interpret the tender documents as published, the second argument raised by Boston Scientific deserves attention as well because, indeed, the criteria applicable to the evaluation of the longevity component were not all that clear. In that regard, it must be noted that the ITT had established that:

In relation to longevity, the tender receiving the highest total longevity score would receive 20 points.  Each other tender would receive “20‑X points where X = 0.2 x the percentage by which each price in each tender exceeded the lowest price tender achieving the lowest total price score” (Boston Scientific v Common Service Agency, para [5], emphasis added).

This seems odd because the criterion that is aimed at scoring longevity is (or, at least, seems to be) referential to the price of all tenders except that of the tender with (self-certified) longer individual device life. In my view, this is a breach of the general scoring rule included in the ITT, according to which price would carry a weight of 60%. This would not be true except for the tender self-certifying highest longevity, and all other offers' price would be taken into account twice (once for the price component itself, and a second time for the scoring of longevity). This is, simply, technically incorrect and, in my view, should have sufficed to cancel the tender.

However, this does not seem to be the whole story and a mistake must have happened in the preparation of the ITT (there seems to be an obvious explanation if one thinks in terms of copy and paste ...) because, in a debriefing letter, the contracting authority had indicated to Boston Scientific that:

The weighting for Longevity was 20% therefore in each lot the longest longevity submitted received 20 points. The scoring guidance in section 3.3 clearly identifies the points allocated to longevity and how the tender would be scored ... (i.e. if one product had longevity or 100 months (longest) it would score 20 points and if a different product submitted had a longevity of 50 months it would score 10 points)  (Boston Scientific v Common Service Agency, para [10], emphasis added).

Now, this is the natural understanding of a relative scoring for longevity, but it happens not to be the scoring rule disclosed in the ITT, which made reference to relative prices rather than relative longevity. Such a substantial deviation between disclosed scoring rule (even if absurd) and its application seems to run against the basic requirements of the principles of transparency and equal treatment, as recently recast by the Court of Justice of the European Union in TNS Dimarso (for a comment, see here).

In my view, this should also have been taken into account by the Court and, rather than dismissing the challenge, Lord Tyre should have sought to understand better whether the longevity criterion had been assessed as the debriefing letter said, or rather as the ITT established (which could have led to abnormal results ultimately preventing Boston Scientific from making much sense of the scores obtained). Most likely, a divergence between the published scoring rules and the actual evaluation of the tender should have led to a cancellation of the award in any case.

Overall, I think that there are two main problems with the Judgment in Boston Scientific v Common Service Agency, and both of them seem to me to result from a lack of engagement with the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union by the Scottish court. First, because it is truly abnormal to allow for self-certification of a technical requirement that can be assessed and verified by the contracting authority--at least, by reference to technical documents. Second, because it is also truly remarkable that a contracting authority can evaluate tenders in a way that deviates from the published criteria without the reviewing court picking up on this important aspect (or anomaly) of the process. Ultimately, in my opinion, this is a strange case. But also a very technically deficient Judgment and an incorrect decision.

How far can Member States push formal requirements in self-certifications? Will the CJEU give Member States a wake up call? (a propos AG Wathelet in C-46/15 )

In his Opinion of 3 March 2016 in Ambisig, C-46/15, EU:C:2016:137, Advocate General Wathelet explored the limits of the formal requirements that Member States can impose on self-certifications provided by tenderers in public procurement procedures. The case discusses the limits under the 2004 rules of EU public procurement, where the use of self-certification was certainly exceptional. However, it is interesting to consider this case as an opportunity for the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to give Member States a wake up call in the roll-out of the 2014 EU public procurement rules, where self-certification has pretty much become the rule rather than the exception. Not least, because AG Wathelet has invited the CJEU by engaging in arguments regarding the future rules.

Why will this ruling be relevant in the future?

Under the 2004 rules [specifically, Art 48(2)(a) of Dir 2004/18], economic operators taking part in public procurement procedures were allowed to furnish evidence of their technical abilities by one or more specified means of proof, which included a list of the principal deliveries effected or the main services provided in the past three years. If the contracting authority indicated that it wishes to receive such a list [Art 48(6) Dir 2004/18], evidence of delivery and services provided had to be be given in the form of certificates issued or countersigned by the competent authority that received the services or deliveries or, 'where the recipient was a private purchaser, by the purchaser’s certification or, failing this, simply by a declaration by the economic operator' [Art 48(2)(a)(ii) of Dir 2004/18, emphasis added]. Thus, the use of such self-declaration of private sector experience was foreseen as a mechanism of last resort or escape clause.  This has now been significantly amended in the 2014 rules.

On the one hand, the system now relies in the self-declarations underlying the European Single Procurement Document [ESPD, Art 59 Dir 2014/24 and , see Part IV, Section B, para (1a), fn 40], which allows economic operators to simply declare that they meet the the relevant selection criteria that have been set out by the contracting authority. Only at the request of the contracting authority, and ideally only if they are chosen for the award of the contract, must economic operators furnish certificates and means of proof backing up their self-declaration [Art 59(4) Dir 2014/24]. There is no doubt, then, that the system is one where self-declarations are now the norm.

Moreover, on the other hand, it should be taken into account that '[c]ontracting authorities shall indicate the required conditions of participation ... together with the appropriate means of proof, in the contract notice or in the invitation to confirm interest' [Art 58(5) Dir 2014/24]. Their choice of means of proof is however limited. Contracting authorities shall not require means of proof other than those referred to in Article 60 Dir 2014/24. For our purposes, according to the relevant provision, the requirement remains that evidence of the economic operators’ technical abilities may be provided by one or more of several specified means of proof, which include a list of the principal deliveries effected or the main services provided over at the most the past three years (Part II of Annex XII Dir 2014/24). However, there is no specific reference of the way in which these lists need to be backed up by economic operators. Thus, the rule disputed in Ambisig that where the recipient was a private purchaser, the economic operator must back-up the relevant entry in its experience list 'by the purchaser’s certification or, failing this, simply by a declaration by the economic operator ' is gone.

The question remains, though, how will Member States (or contracting authorities) deal with self-certifications of experience under the new rules at a practical level. It does not seem too far-fetched to assume that they will carry on as usual and require the same types of supporting (self)certifications that they are used to handle under the 2004 rules. Thus, an analysis of the Opinion of AG Wathelet in Ambisig is relevant, not only in relation to the already phasing out 2004 rules, but also for the proper roll-out of the 2014 rules.

The issues surrounding formalities in Ambisig under the 2004 rules

The dispute in Ambisig was multi-dimensional, particularly because the Portuguese interpretation of Art 48(2)(a)(ii) of Dir 2004/18 was rather complex (or rather, exceedingly formalistic) when it came to the possibility of accepting certifications from private purchasers, which was expressed in the following stylised terms in the contract notice of the procurement in dispute: In order to be selected, the candidates must submit the following application documents: ... a declaration by the client on headed, stamped paper confirming ... in accordance with the model declaration in Annex ... to this contract notice. The declaration must bear a signature certified by a notary, lawyer or other competent entity, specifying the capacity of the person signing.

This raises many issues, particularly in relation with the impossibility to provide a mere self-declaration by the economic operator itself (which is no longer a legal issue under the 2014 rules). However, for the purposes of assessing the relevance of this case for the future, the relevant question before the CJEU, and towards which AG Wathelet's Opinion provides an interesting answer is as follows:

Must Article 48(2)(a)(ii), second indent, of Directive 2004/18 be interpreted to the effect that it precludes the application of rules laid down by the contracting authority, which, on pain of exclusion, require the private purchaser’s certification to contain authentication of the signature by a notary, lawyer or other competent entity?

In my view, for the reasons explained above, this will apply mutatis mutandi to any requirements applicable to certificates to be provided as back of an ESPD self-declaration of experience under the 2014 rules.

Interestingly, after engaging in another tripping exercise of law and language where a literal analysis of several language versions of the contested provision are compared and contrasted without reaching any firm position on its proper interpretation (for a recent previous case of such analysis, on that occasion by the General Court, see here), AG Wathelet considers the following:

62. First of all, the Court has consistently held that Article 48 of Directive 2004/18 establishes a closed system which limits the methods of assessment and verification available to contracting authorities and, therefore, limits their opportunities to lay down requirements.

63. The Court has also stated that even within the framework of an open system ... contracting authorities’ freedom is not unlimited and the aspects chosen must be ‘objectively such as to provide information on such standing … without, however, going beyond what is reasonably necessary for that purpose’.

64. The same considerations apply, a fortiori, to the requirements laid down in the closed evidential system under Article 48 of Directive 2004/18. In my opinion, requiring authentication of the signature of a private purchaser attesting to a delivery effected or a service provided by an economic operator who has applied for a contract goes beyond what is necessary to prove the technical ability of the operator in question and is excessively formalistic when compared to the straightforward declaration by the economic operator, which is the subsidiary form of evidence permitted under the second indent of Article 48(2)(a)(ii) of Directive 2004/18.

65. If the contracting authority has concerns about the veracity of the document submitted to it, it may also, in my view, request additional information to demonstrate the authenticity of the certification provided. Indeed, as part of the contextual analysis, it must be recalled that Article 45(2)(g) of Directive 2004/18 makes it possible to exclude from the contract any operator who ‘is guilty of serious misrepresentation in supplying the information required’ (Opinion in C-46/15, paras 62-65, references omitted, emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added).

AG Watheler's glimpse into the future

Remarkably, after carrying out a historical analysis of the way in which the 2004 rules came to have their wording, AG Wathelet uses the 2014 rules as an interpretation tool. Beyond the time-consistency (or not) of such an approach to statutory interpretation, his analysis includes policy arguments around the following considerations:

73. ... Directive 2014/24 ... goes even further in the sense of reducing evidential formalities by removing all references to certification by the purchaser.

74. From now on, Article 60(4) of that directive — which replaces Article 48(2) of Directive 2004/18 — simply provides that ‘evidence of the economic operators’ technical abilities may be provided by one or more of the means listed in Annex XII Part II, in accordance with the nature, quantity or importance, and use of the works, supplies or services’.

75. Under Annex XII Part II(a)(ii) of Directive 2014/24, the means of evidence attesting to economic operators’ technical abilities are ‘a list of the principal deliveries effected or the main services provided over at the most the past three years, with the sums, dates and recipients, whether public or private, involved. Where necessary in order to ensure an adequate level of competition, contracting authorities may indicate that evidence of relevant supplies or services delivered or performed more than three years before will be taken into account’. The need for this list to be accompanied by a certification from the purchaser has therefore disappeared.

76. Even though Directive 2014/24 does not apply to the dispute in the main proceedings, this new directive, which repeals Directive 2004/18, is relevant in that it expresses the current intention of the EU legislature. It may therefore be of assistance in ascertaining the current meaning of an earlier, similar provision, provided, however, that such interpretation is not contra legem.

77.  In the present case, it seems to me that Directives 92/50 and 2014/24 confirm the EU legislature’s continuing intention not to make evidence of the technical ability of an economic operator subject to any specific formality and do so in a way that does not conflict with the wording of the applicable provision.

78. In other words, viewed in its context and from a historical perspective, the second indent of Article 48(2)(a)(ii) of Directive 2004/18 imposes no other requirement than the assurance or confirmation, by the purchaser, that the service on which the economic operator relies with a view to securing the contract was actually provided (Opinion in C-46/15, paras 73-78, references omitted, emphasis added).

I am not sure that AG Wathelet's consideration in para 75 would necessarily be the natural interpretation of Annex XII Part II(a)(ii) of Directive 2014/24, because contracting authorities may well be tempted to consider that the Directive does not actually exclude any mechanisms of certification from the purchaser (it simply just not foresees them) and, in any case, they could be tempted to exercise their prerogative to 'invite economic operators to supplement or clarify the certificates received' [Art 59(4) in fine Dir 2014/24] by requesting similarly formalised (private) purchaser certifications. Thus, his interpretation, which I personally very much share, runs against that possibility and an explicit endorsement by the CJEU would be most welcome.

In any case, what is clear is that, in AG Wathelet (and my) opinion, the 2004 and ad maiorem the 2014 EU public procurement rules preclude 'the application of rules laid down by a contracting authority which, on pain of exclusion, require the private purchaser’s certification to bear a signature certified by a notary, lawyer or other competent entity'. We can just hope that the CJEU will endorse this approach.