Case C-454/06, Pressetext Nachrichtenagentur v Austria - legal and economic aspects. Solutions for public administration?

Abstract

The overall question of when amendments to an existing agreement are to be regarded as constituting a new award of a public contract has not come before the ECJ. The Pressetext case and decision’s practice in the Czech Republic has solved this question: In order to ensure transparency of procedures and equal treatment of tenderers, amendments to provisions of a public contract during the currency of the contract constitute a new award of a contract when they are materially different in character from the original contract and, therefore, are such as to demonstrate the intention of the parties to renegotiate the essential terms of that contract. We can say that for this purpose an amendment to a public contract may be regarded as ‘material’ when: it introduces conditions which, had they been part of the initial award procedure, would have allowed for the admission of tenderers other than those initially admitted, or would have allowed for the acceptance of a tender other than the one initially accepted, it extends the scope of the contract considerably to encompass services not initially covered and it changes the economic balance of the contract in favour of the contractor in a manner which was not provided for in the terms of the initial contract.