Action brought on 14 January 2020 — Intertranslations (Intertransleïsions) Metafraseis v Parliament

(Case T-20/20)

(2020/C 95/46)

Language of the case: English

Parties

Applicant: Intertranslations (Intertransleïsions) Metafraseis AE (Kallithea Attikis, Greece) (represented by: N. Korogiannakis, lawyer)

Defendant: European Parliament

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

— annul the decision of the European Parliament of 5 December 2019 to award it second place in the call for tenders TRA/EU19/2019: Translation services lot 5 (translation into English);

— order the European Parliament to pay the applicant’s damages suffered as a result of the loss of the contract;

— alternatively, order the European Parliament to pay the applicant’s damages suffered as a result of the loss of opportunity;

— order the European Parliament to pay the applicant’s legal fees and other costs and expenses incurred in connection with this application, even if the current application is rejected.

Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicant relies on five pleas in law.

1. First plea in law, alleging insufficient motivation — Infringement of the obligation to state reasons, infringement of Article 296 of the TFEU, of Annex I, Chapter 1, Common provisions, Section 1, point 31 of the Financial Regulation (EU) 2018/1046 (1) and of Article 89 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/715 (2) — Infringement of an essential procedural requirement and of the right to an effective remedy. — The applicant argues that the motivation communicated is insufficient in concreto, since it is not specific as to which deficiency of each sub-criterion corresponds to the points deducted for each alleged individual translation mistake. Therefore, the applicant can neither understand what the mistake exactly concerns, nor is it in a position to analyse and counter argue correspondingly.

2. Second plea in law, alleging manifest errors of assessment. — The evaluation contains a number of manifest errors of assessment in relation to the sub-criteria ‘Style — Clarity’, ‘Fluency — Punctuation’ as well as ‘presentation and accuracy’ and ‘mistranslation’.

3. Third plea in law, alleging unclear evaluation criteria — Use of the same criterion twice — Award of points for the same characteristic of the tenders under two different evaluation criteria. — One error type is unclear, since no specific analysis is included in the glossary of the tender specification and does not constitute a technical term in the profession of translation. The tender specifications also provide for the examination of the same issues in two different criteria, thus flawing the result of the evaluation.

4. Fourth plea in law, alleging infringement of Article 21.2 of Annex I of the Financial Regulation (EU) 2018/1046 — Inadequate weighting of the award criteria. — The price counting only for 33 %, while the quality for 66 %, very little importance is given to the price, neutralising the impact of the cost in the award process, encouraging the purchase of unreasonably expensive services, thus leading to unsound financial management.

5. Fifth plea in law, alleging infringement of the tender specifications and Article 175 of the Financial Regulation (EU) 2018/1046, related to the standstill period. — Despite the announcement by the European Parliament regarding suspension of the signature of the contract in question, the Official Journal of the EU contained a notice that the contract had already been signed on 4 December 2019, and no correction has been published, thus infringing the tender specifications and Article 175 of the Financial Regulation No 2018/1046 relating to the standstill period.

(1) Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2018/1046 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 July 2018 on the financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union, amending Regulations (EU) No 1296/2013, (EU) No 1301/2013, (EU) No 1303/2013, (EU) No 1304/2013, (EU) No 1309/2013, (EU) No 1316/2013, (EU) No 223/2014, (EU) No 283/2014, and Decision No 541/2014/EU and repealing Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 966/2012 (OJ 2018 L 193, p. 1).

(2) Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/715 of 18 December 2018 on the framework financial regulation for the bodies set up under the TFEU and Euratom Treaty and referred to in Article 70 of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2018/1046 of the European Parliament and of the Council (OJ 2019 L 122, p. 1).