WRITTEN QUESTION P-2573/01

by Robert Goebbels (PSE) to the Commission

(13 September 2001)

Subject: Europe by Satellite invitation to tender

On 22 August, through its Press and Communications DG, the Commission issued an invitation to tender relating to the Europe by Satellite (broadcast since 1996 on the Eutelsat Hot Bird satellite) project. The documents relating to the invitation to tender are quite bulky and apparently not all of them were made available until late August. Given that 1 October has been set as the deadline for submission of what will be highly technical bids, one is obliged to ask whether the relevant Commission departments really intended to give all interested service providers a chance to compete for the contract, or whether the moment chosen to issue the invitation to tender (August) and the very little time given to potential bidders to react to the tender documents were in fact designed to deter potential rivals of the current operator of the Europe by Satellite service?

Answer given by Mr Prodi on behalf of the Commission

(18 October 2001)

The Commission contracts the provision of Europe by Satellite satellite television broadcasting services out to an external service provider. The current contract was signed in March 1999, renewable four times for a period of one year, i.e. capable of being extended until 2004 at most. However, considering technical developments and trends in market prices in this field, the Commission has preferred to launch a new competitive tender offer without waiting until 2004.

In order to ensure a smooth transition between the current contractor and a potential new contractor from March 2002, the Commission, in 2001, announced its intention to launch an invitation to tender by publishing the prior information notice in the Official Journal(1), in accordance with Council Directive 92/50/EEC of 18 June 1992 relating to the coordination of procedures for the award of public service contracts(2), and then launched the tender procedure with the publication of a contract notice in the Official Journal of the European Communities(3).

The prior information is published in order to ensure that all the firms likely to submit a tender for a public service contract are given sufficient notice of the awarding authority's intention to launch a competitive tender procedure for a given service. The prior information is simply an announcement of a forthcoming procedure. The tender procedure proper is not officially launched and interested firms cannot request the specifications for the contract concerned until the contract notice is published. The deadlines for requests for the specifications and relevant documents are stipulated in the contract notice, as is the deadline for the submission of tenders. It is vitally important that all the firms are treated on a strictly equal footing and that they are all subject to the same time constraints when preparing their tenders.

In the specific case of the invitation to tender for the Europe by Satellite broadcasting service contract, the deadline set for requesting documents was 19 September 2001, and the Commission, in accordance with the above directive, was required to respond to these requests and dispatch the necessary documents within a period of 6 days. The Commission was therefore under no legal obligation to dispatch the specifications before 28 August 2001. In actual fact, the first mailings were sent out on 22 August 2001 in response to two requests for information sent in following the publication of the prior information without waiting for the contract notice to be published. Between 22 August 2001 and 6 September 2001, 19 further requests were received, each of which were answered by return.

Considering the number of applications already received, the Commission takes the view that publishing the contract notice on 22 August 2001 in no way restricted the competitive tender procedure.

Nor does it view the very technical nature of the specifications or the deadline of 1 October 2001 for the submission of tenders as presenting an obstacle to competition.

With reference to the first charge, the Commission would point out that this invitation to tender involved a highly specialised field requiring highly sophisticated equipment. The complex technical specification is unavoidable but nonetheless perfectly accessible to any specialist undertaking likely to submit a tender.

With reference to the second charge, the Commission would point out that, according to Directive 92/50/EEC, the deadline set for the submission of tenders must not be less than 52 days after the date when the contract notice was sent to the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. As the contract notice was sent on 10 August 2001 for publication on 22 August 2001, the submission deadline (1 October 2001) complies fully with the terms of the directive.

For all the above reasons, the Commission hereby refutes the Honourable Member's suggestion that the terms of this tender procedure were biased in favour of the present contractor, whose contract could otherwise have been renewed automatically for two further years, and against its competitors.

(1) OJ S 121, 27.6.2001.

(2) OJ L 209, 24.7.1992.

(3) OJ S 160, 22.8.2001.