Every supplier must have access to public procurement, which is governed by procurement law and primarily seeks to prevent any favouritism. The Public Procurement Code is regularly amended in pursuit of an elusive compromise between freedom of choice and a methodological straitjacket, so as to ensure that public funds are properly used.
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The rules of the game
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Article 53 of the Code states that the contract must be awarded to the most advantageous bid, on the basis of non-discriminatory criteria; if there is only one criterion, it can only be price (for standardized products, for example). Strictly speaking, however, the Code does not require public-sector buyers to include price among the criteria used to assess a bid. Yet, as the accompanying guide points out, the quality of a bid cannot be independent of its price, making price an unavoidable implicit criterion. Price is therefore compulsory in one case but not in another (when multiple criteria are used). This lack of rigour is rather surprising…
Using price as the sole criterion is generally discouraged, and case law has held that it is unlawful for complex works. Consider two criteria: one financial and the other technical. The question then is how to assign each criterion a score in order to determine the final score, possibly using weighting coefficients.
