Judgment;Information — ECLI:EU:T:2022:640
Date: 2022-10-19
Language of the case: English
Court formation: Second Chamber
Subject matter: Public procurement in the European Union
Procedure: Action for annulment - unfounded
Origin: Belgium

summary of how each detail of its tender was taken into account when the tender was evaluated and, secondly, in the context of the notification of the characteristics and relative advantages of the successful tender, a detailed comparative analysis of the successful tender and of the unsuccessful tender (see judgment of 10 February 2021, Sophia Group v Parliament, T‑578/19, not published, EU:T:2021:77, paragraph 166 and the case-law cited). 163 In the present case, the evaluation committee took the view that, although, in the applicant’s technical proposal, ‘the mitigation strategies for most components [were] well defined and aligned to provide the agreed performance’, the fact remained that, ‘for critical components like the CPU and the GPU the proposed alternatives [were] not convincing as the tenderer heavily [relied] on the release timescale of the suppliers [and that] alternative solutions proposed [might] alter significantly the final performance and power consumption numbers’. 164 It appears that that statement of reasons is amply sufficient to enable the applicant to understand the factors taken into consideration by the evaluation committee when it awarded its tender a score for that subcriterion. The evaluation committee found that the applicant’s considerable dependence on decisions taken by its own suppliers, over which it had no or little influence, was likely to weaken its tender. 165 Even if the applicant did not agree with that finding, such a disagreement corresponds to a criticism of the merits of the contested decision and not to a failure to state reasons. 166 The third part therefore appears to be unfounded, with the result that the fourth plea must be rejected in its entirety as unfounded, without it being necessary to examine whether that plea is ineffective. 167 Since the assessment of the evidence in the file produced in the present proceedings made it possible to reject as unfounded the four pleas in law raised by the applicant in support of the application for annulment of the contested decision, the action must be dismissed in its entirety, without it being necessary to grant the applicant’s request for the implementation of a measure of organisation of procedure and without there being any need to examine the plea of inadmissibility raised by EuroHPC. Costs 168 Under Article 134(1) of the Rules of Procedure, the unsuccessful party is to be ordered to pay the costs if they have been applied for in the successful party’s pleadings. Since the applicant has been unsuccessful, it must be ordered to bear its own costs and to pay those incurred by EuroHPC, in accordance with the form of order sought by EuroHPC. 169 Furthermore, in accordance with Article 138(1) of the Rules of Procedure, the Member States and institutions which have intervened in the proceedings are to bear their own costs. Consequently, the Commission is to bear its own costs. On those grounds, THE GENERAL COURT (Second Chamber) hereby: 1. Dismisses the action; 2. Orders Lenovo Global Technology Belgium BV to bear its own costs and to pay those incurred by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC); 3. Orders the European Commission to bear its own costs. Tomljenović Schalin Nõmm Delivered in open court in Luxembourg on 19 October 2022. E. Coulon M. van der Woude Registrar President * Language of the case: English.