Belgium to face EU Court over building tender

Date: 18/07/1996

JUST four months after the Flemish government completed work on its distinctive new parliament building in Brussels, the European Commission is asking EU judges to rule that the prestigious project broke strict Union public procurement rules.

The Commission is accusing the project's organisers of ignoring EU legislation which stipulates that public authorities must publish notices in the Union's Official Journal seeking tenders from companies in any member state for all contracts above 5 million ecu.

“Although the contracts relating to the construction of the new Vlaamse Raad exceeded the threshold, there was no invitation to tender at Community level and no contract notice was ever published in the Official Journal,” said the Commission.

Flanders chose only Flemish firms to build its new parliament despite warnings from the Commission in 1994 and 1995 that the project was ignoring EU rules and should be suspended.

In their defence, the Belgian authorities claimed that as a constitutionally independent national institution, a parliament was not obliged to apply Union regulations on the awarding of public works contracts.

That argument was rejected by the Commission, which maintained that the Flemish parliament was an awarding body and thus was required to implement the EU legislation.

It pointed out that the rules defined contracting authorities as “the state, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law, or associations formed by one or several of such authorities”. Such a definition is also recognised by the Belgian legislation of 1993 implementing the Union provisions and confirming that they applied to the state “in its entirety”.

This is the second time in a year that a prestigious Belgian project has fallen foul of EU public procurement rules. Brussels has also been accused of failing to put out for proper tender contracts for the construction of the third European school.