Action brought on 4 November 2009 - Agriconsulting Europe v Commission

(Case T-443/09)

Language of the case: Italian

Parties

Applicant: Agriconsulting Europe SA (Brussels, Belgium) (represented by: F. Sciaudone, R. Sciaudone and A. Neri, lawyers)

Defendant: Commission of the European Communities

Form of order sought

Annul the contested decision.

Order the Commission to pay compensation for the damage suffered.

Order the Commission to pay the costs of the proceedings.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The applicant in the present action is a leading management consultancy providing technical advisory services for international development projects. It is bringing an action against the Commission's decision in connection with the award of Lot No 11 in contract notice EuropeAid/127054/C/SER/multi (OJ S 128 of 4 July 2008) not to include among the six economically most advantageous bids that submitted by the consortium of which the applicant was the leading participant and to award that lot to other tenderers.

The applicant puts forward the following pleas in support of its application for annulment:

distortion of the evidence and the factual circumstances. The contested decision rejected the applicant's bid on the basis that the 'declarations of exclusivity' of three experts in its bid were also to be found in other bids and it was therefore necessary to exclude them from the evaluation. That conclusion is vitiated in so far as it failed to take account of the experts' statements denying that some of those declarations had any value, on the one hand, or actually claiming that they were false, on the other;

misinterpretation of the consequences to be drawn from the non-compliance of the 'declarations of exclusivity' and infringement of the principle of legal certainty, in so far as the defendant imposed the penalty laid down for cases in which more than one declaration of exclusivity is signed on all the tenders, without considering the role and responsibilities of the company or the expert;

infringement of legal requirements, of the principle of sound administration and the principal of proportionality, in so far as the defendant failed to exercise the power conferred on it to request clarification where there is some ambiguity concerning some aspect of the tender before confirming that errors exist which may affect the validity of a tender.

The applicant,which also submits that there has been infringement of the obligation to state reasons, seeks, in addition, compensation for the damage suffered on grounds of non-contractual liability for unlawful acts or, in the alternative, for lawful acts.

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