** This remark was first printed as an Op-Ed for EU Legislation Stay on 8 December 2022 (see formatted model). I’m reposting it right here in case of broader curiosity. **
On the face of it, in Infraestruturas de Portugal and Futrifer Indústrias Ferroviárias (C-66/22), the Courtroom of Justice needed to assess whether or not Member States can restrict the exclusion of competitors regulation violators from participation in tenders for public contracts to circumstances the place the nationwide competitors authority has beforehand imposed such debarment as an ancillary penalty. Whereas it is a believable transposition strategy that seeks to centralise competitors regulation evaluation beneath the management of the specialist administrative authority, it could possibly additionally cut back the effectiveness of procurement mechanisms searching for to protect (a lot wanted) competitors for public contracts. It’s thus truthful sufficient to check the boundaries of the discretion that contracting authorities can retain on this context. Nonetheless, in Infraestruturas, the Courtroom of Justice did two different issues which can be doubtlessly important past the narrower area of procurement governance. First, the Courtroom reversed its earlier case regulation and established that Member States are (not) allowed to not transpose discretionary exclusion grounds. This says one thing (however I’m not too positive what) in regards to the extra normal stage of discretion that Member States retain within the transposition of (prescriptively worded) Directives into their nationwide programs beneath Artwork 288 TFEU. Second, the Courtroom furthered a line of reasoning that involves assign ‘particular person rights’ to contracting authorities—that’s, entities inside the public sector—in what may appear to be the creation of an ‘intra-State’ modality of vertical direct impact. On this Op-Ed, I attempt to make some sense of those two developments and depart apart for now the main points of the interpretation of the precise grounds for the exclusion of financial operators beneath Directive 2014/24/EU.
Not discretionary to transpose discretionary exclusion grounds
It’s trite EU regulation that, beneath Artwork 288 TFEU, Member States retain discretion within the selection of kind and strategies for the transposition of a Directive. Whereas Directives might be prescriptive about their goals and objectives and, generally, about particular modes of safety of the related authorized curiosity, there appears to be a (theoretical) settlement that Directives nonetheless (should) depart a margin of discretion to Member States—else, they surreptitiously shapeshift into Rules. Such discretion would appear to cowl particularly these parts of a Directive which can be explicitly labelled as discretionary. This ‘orthodoxy’ gave the impression to be straightforwardly utilized by the Courtroom of Justice within the evaluation of the constraints on the transposition of the Public Procurement Directive 2014/24.
The Public Procurement Directive incorporates a algorithm on the exclusion from tenders for public contracts of financial operators which have fallen in need of their authorized obligations. In Artwork. 57, along with setting guidelines relevant to all exclusion choices, the Directive distinguishes between, on the one hand, obligatory exclusion grounds that require contracting authorities to exclude financial operators convicted by ultimate judgment for one among a sequence of breaches (Artwork. 57(1)) and, alternatively, discretionary exclusion grounds that enable contracting authorities to exclude the affected financial operators (Artwork. 57(4)). Member States are explicitly allowed to show discretionary exclusion grounds obligatory beneath their transposing laws. Conversely, till now, the Courtroom had been clear that Member States had been allowed to not transpose discretionary exclusion grounds. To date, so good.
In Infraestruturas, nonetheless, the Courtroom of Justice U-turned. It said that:
… the primary subparagraph of Article 57(4) of Directive 2014/24 … states that ‘contracting authorities could exclude or could also be required by Member States to exclude any financial operator from participation in a procurement process’ in any of the conditions referred to in factors (a) to (i) of that provision.
In that connection, it admittedly follows from sure judgments of the Courtroom … that the Member States can determine whether or not or to not transpose the facultative grounds for exclusion referred to in that provision. The Courtroom has the truth is held that … the Member States are free to not apply the facultative grounds for exclusion set out in that directive or to include them into nationwide regulation with various levels of rigour in keeping with authorized, financial or social issues prevailing at nationwide stage (see, to that impact, judgments of 19 June 2019, Meca, C‑41/18, EU:C:2019:507, paragraph 33; of 30 January 2020, Tim, C‑395/18, EU:C:2020:58, paragraphs 34 and 40; and of three June 2021, Rad Service and Others, C‑210/20, EU:C:2021:445, paragraph 28).
Nonetheless, an evaluation of the wording of the primary subparagraph of Article 57(4) of Directive 2014/24, the context into which that provision matches, and the intention that the latter pursues inside the framework of that directive, reveals that opposite to what’s obvious from these judgments, the Member States are beneath the duty to transpose that provision into their nationwide regulation (C-66/22, paras. 48-50, emphases added).
In my opinion, this U-turn challenges the ‘orthodoxy’ to the extent that the Courtroom topics the margin of discretion left to the Member States by the EU legislators to the Courtroom’s evaluation of whether or not what’s clearly labelled as discretionary—and was as such handled in earlier case regulation—is permissibly left to the discretion of the Member States in view of the goals of the Directive. I believe that this introduces a doubtlessly difficult line of problem of the content material of EU Directives on the grounds that the EU legislators couldn’t have left to the Member States’ discretion particular features of their content material with out undermining the objectives of the Directive itself. This will in the end constrain the upstream discretion within the selection of authorized instrument beneath Artwork 288 TFEU by the EU legislators themselves, and additional erode the excellence between Rules and Directives if the content material of the Directives can the truth is ultimately be binding of their entirety and straight relevant in all Member States. Additional, this U-turn relies on a somewhat peculiar interpretation of the wording of the Public Procurement Directive that involves assign ‘particular person rights’ to the general public sector. Given this peculiarity, I’m not too positive whether or not the deviation from the orthodoxy in Infraestruturas signifies a major shift by the Courtroom of Justice or ‘simply’ an exception or oddity which will verify the overall rule.
‘Intra-State’ vertical direct impact?
In justifying its U-turn, the Courtroom of Justice stresses that, beneath Artwork. 57(4) of the Public Procurement Directive:
… the selection as to the choice whether or not or to not exclude an financial operator from a public procurement process on one of many grounds set out in that provision falls to the contracting authority, except the Member States determine to remodel that choice to exclude into an obligation to take action. Accordingly, the Member States should transpose that provision both by permitting or by requiring contracting authorities to use the exclusion grounds laid down by the latter provision. … a Member State can not omit these grounds from its nationwide laws transposing Directive 2014/24 and thus deprive contracting authorities of the chance – which should, on the very least, be conferred on them by advantage of that provision – of making use of these grounds.
… it ought to be famous that recital 101 of that directive states that ‘contracting authorities ought to … be given the chance to exclude financial operators which have confirmed unreliable’. That recital thus confirms that a Member State should transpose that provision so as to not deprive contracting authorities of the chance referred to within the previous paragraph and that recital.
…
Lastly, as to the target pursued by Directive 2014/24 in as far as issues the facultative grounds for exclusion, the Courtroom has acknowledged that that goal is mirrored within the emphasis positioned on the powers of contracting authorities. Thus the EU legislature meant to confer on the contracting authority, and on it alone, the duty of assessing whether or not a candidate or tenderer should be excluded from a procurement process through the stage of choosing the tenderers (see, to that impact, judgments of 19 June 2019, Meca, C‑41/18, EU:C:2019:507, paragraph 34, and of three October 2019, Delta Antrepriză de Construcţii şi Montaj 93, C‑267/18, EU:C:2019:826, paragraph 25).
The choice, or certainly obligation, for the contracting authority to use the exclusion grounds set out within the first subparagraph of Article 57(4) of Directive 2014/24 is particularly meant to allow it to evaluate the integrity and reliability of every of the financial operators taking part in a public procurement process.
The EU legislature thus meant to make sure that contracting authorities have, in all Member States, the potential for excluding financial operators who’re considered unreliable by these authorities (C-66/22, paras. 51-52 and 55-57, emphases added).
Even when not altogether new—see Meca (C-41/18) and Delta (C-267/18)—I discover this line of reasoning puzzling. The way in which the Courtroom of Justice has interpreted Artwork. 57(4) of the Public Procurement Directive equates to an ‘particular person proper’ for contracting authorities to not contract with financial operators they deem unreliable and, crucially, that is an ‘particular person proper’ that Member States can not deprive them from. The safety of such proper implies an ‘intra-State’ modality of vertical direct impact—not less than to the extent that, after Infraestruturas, a contracting authority of any Member State with centralised exclusion decision-making can problem any constraints on its administrative discretion and easily put aside the home guidelines and straight depend on the Directive to proceed to exclusion on the idea of discretionary grounds.
To my thoughts, this line of reasoning extracts the fallacious implications from the wording of the Directive due to the quasi-anthropomorphism of contracting authorities. On condition that the Directive conceptualises contracting authorities because the related unit of decision-making, references to contracting authorities ought to be seen as references to choices inside a procurement process, not as references to brokers that derive rights independently from—and even in opposition to—the construction of the State into which they’re embedded. In the long run, contracting authorities are outlined as ‘the State, regional or native authorities, our bodies ruled by public regulation or associations fashioned by a number of such authorities or a number of such our bodies ruled by public regulation’ (Artwork. 2(1)(1) Directive 2014/24). A practical interpretation of the wording of Article 57(4) of the Public Procurement Directive would recognise that the that means of ‘contracting authorities could exclude or could also be required by Member States to exclude’ is that ‘in a lined procurement process, it’s permissible to exclude, and it may be made obligatory to exclude’—which might then straightforwardly observe the orthodoxy in permitting Member States to train the discretion on the shape and methodology of transposition of that chance.
I submit that the Courtroom of Justice has adopted a line of reasoning that can also be problematic in relation to different provisions of the Public Procurement Directive, particularly in relation to the potential results it may have in ‘empowering’ contracting authorities to take programs of motion (eg worldwide collaboration) that would suggest home extremely vires.
Remaining ideas
What I discover most complicated on this a part of the Infraestruturas Judgment is that the Courtroom may have discovered a lot much less disruptive and complicated methods to succeed in the identical conclusion. For instance, it may have discovered that, in empowering the nationwide competitors authority to make choices on the exclusion of tenderers via the imposition of ancillary penalties, Portugal had determined to transpose the related discretionary exclusion floor, however finished so incorrectly or defectively by concurrently transposing the bottom however limiting the discretion of the contracting authority. I might nonetheless discover concern with that strategy, however not less than it will be simpler to reconcile with vital elements of the orthodoxy of elementary features of EU regulation.
