Court of Justice confirms open public procurement procedures can use a multi-stage knock out approach

Court of Justice confirms open public procurement procedures can use a multi-stage knock out approach (Montte SL v Musikene).

The Court of Justice clarified that it is permissible during an open public procurement procedure to exclude bids at an initial stage based on technical criteria, and to only permit those who pass that stage to have their bids assessed at a second economic evaluation stage. The court noted that this approach was not expressly excluded by Directive EU 2014/24/EU and indeed the same is the case for the Public Contract Regulations 2015.

This article by Adam Heppinstall was first published by Lexis®PSL on 24th September 2018.