2.9.3. Publicising the award of the contract

Publishing award notices is important a legal obligation so as to respect the principle of transparency.

In the case of procurement, once the contract has been signed, the Contracting Authority must draft a contract award notice without delay using the template in Annex C9 and Annex D9, and send it to the European Commission, which publishes the results of the tender procedure in the Official Journal (where applicable), and on the EuropeAid website. If the award notice is also published locally, the Contracting Authority must arrange local publication directly.An award notice is published if the contract notice was published or if the value of the contract is above international thresholds ( supplies > € 300 000, works > € 5 000 000), unless the contract was declared secret, or where the performance of the contract must be accompanied by special security measures, or where the protection of the essential interests of the European Union or the beneficiary country so requires, and where the publication of the award notice is deemed not to be appropriate.

In addition, regardless of the type of procedure, the Contracting Authority must:

• send the other tenderers a standard letter (Annex C8 and Annex D8) within not more than 15 days from receipt of the countersigned contract;

• record all statistical information concerning the procurement procedure including the contract value, the names of the other tenderers and the successful tenderer.

The information submitted to the unsuccessful tenderers must follow the template referred to above. If unsuccessful tenderers request further information, they may be given any information which is not confidential, e.g. comments regarding their strengths and weaknesses, as this may assist them to be successful in future tenders.

The Contracting Authority is responsible for drafting the contract award notice without delay using the template in Annex C9 and Annex D9 and for submitting it for publication to the European Commission in electronic form after having received the countersigned contract from the successful tenderer.

In the case of grants, all awarded grants in the course of a financial year shall be published annually on the EuropeAid website and, if relevant, in other appropriate media, in accordance with the template in Annex E11.

The unsuccessful applicants should be informed without delay, and in any event no later than 30 days after the award decision has been taken, using the template in annex e9. As also stated in the chapter on Grants, save in exceptional cases, notifications to all applicants on the outcome of the evaluation of their applications should take place within 6 months following the submission deadline of the full application. If unsuccessful applicants request further information, they may be given more details (for instance any weakness detected in their proposals, poor or insufficient description of the action, budget not matching the proposed activities, overall lack of coherence, etc.) relating to the evaluation of their own proposals.