WRITTEN QUESTION E-0842/02 by Jan Andersson (PSE) and Peter Skinner (PSE) to the Commission. The Reprendre — City of Tomorrow project and application deadlines.
Date: 2002-03-26
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: Belgium, EU financing, European Commission, delivery, project evaluation, project of common interest, rail transport, strike, town planning

C 229 E/146

Official Journal of the European Communities

EN

26.9.2002

(2002/C 229 E/167)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0842/02

by Jan Andersson (PSE) and Peter Skinner (PSE) to the Commission

(26 March 2002)

Subject: The ‘Reprendre (cid:21) City of Tomorrow’ project and application deadlines

We have been contacted by the Blekinge Institute in the Swedish city of Karlskrona and by the University
of Kent at Medway in the UK. We were informed that their project application ‘Reprendre (cid:21) City of
Tomorrow’ (proposal No: EVK4-2001-00256 Reprendre) was rejected by the Commission because the
application was slightly late in arriving at the Commission’s offices.

According to the information we have at our disposal, the late arrival of the application was caused by a
strike on Belgian railways. We take the view that that was an event that the applicants could not possibly
have prevented or foreseen. We therefore find it remarkable and unreasonable that the Commission would
not accept the existence of ‘force majeure’, especially since we understand that the Commission regards
genuinely exceptional circumstances of this nature as viable arguments in the event of failure to meet
project output deadlines. Moreover, we feel that it must be virtually impossible for EU citizens to
understand and accept that applications that have been thoroughly prepared, frequently at considerable
cost, are not even assessed by the Commission because of a train strike or similar.

In light of the above, would it be possible for the Commission to reconsider its initial judgment

1.
regarding the ‘City of Tomorrow’ application and to assess it as though it had arrived on time?

2. Would it not be reasonable, as a general rule, to apply a system whereby the date of posting (as
evidenced by the postmark) is taken as the basis for determining if an application is sent within the
deadline or not?

Answer given by Mr Busquin on behalf of the Commission

(25 April 2002)

1.
The choice of method of submitting projects (hard copy or electronically) and sending in proposals
in response to the call for proposals concerned (EESD-ESD-3) was left to the discretion of tenderers. In the
case in point, the proposers chose to deliver their proposal in person and made arrangements to deliver it
on 15 October 2001 at 16h30, 30 minutes before the expiry of the deadline, even though the call for
proposals was published on 15 November 2000, 11 months earlier. Given the frequent delays that can
occur with transport systems, this extremely small margin was a considerable risk that the tenderers took
deliberately.

The ‘force majeure’ argument cannot be invoked here. The Commission complied with all the rules laid
down for the evaluation of proposals, and can only express its regrets to the tenderers, but cannot go back
on its decision to declare the proposal ineligible. This position was explained in a letter dated 19 March
2002 replying to the Members of Parliament.

2.
Unlike earlier calls for proposals, the EESD-ESD-3 call referred to the delivery and not the sending of
proposals. Earlier evaluations had been disrupted as result of late receipt of proposals caused by delays in
delivery by the various European postal services. This prompted the Commission to adopt this new
arrangement, which has proved broadly satisfactory.

(2002/C 229 E/168)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0844/02

by Gabriele Stauner (PPE-DE) to the Commission

Subject: Funding of renovation of the Berlaymont building

(27 March 2002)

The company ‘Berlaymont 2000’ has been renovating the Berlaymont building for the Commission since
1995. The Belgian public buildings administration is the majority shareholder in ‘Berlaymont 2000’.