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Procurement rules are easy to get slightly wrong, and slightly wrong is expensive for a bidder. These are the rules we hold ourselves to.
We use an AI system to draft our guides and to compare them with the official texts. The checks described below are carried out with its help, and each guide says at the top that AI was used.
Sources
We work from official texts first:
- EU legislation in its consolidated version, from EUR-Lex and the EU Publications Office. When a provision has been amended, we check the current text, not the original.
- Judgments of the Court of Justice and the General Court, read in their official text. We cite the case number and date, and we say when a judgment was given under an older Directive or a different one.
- National legislation only from the official national source. If we canāt confirm that a national rule is still in force in its current version, we leave it out.
Commentary by lawyers, academics and practitioners is useful for spotting issues. We name it when we draw on it, and we donāt treat it as a source for what the law says.
Four kinds of statement, labelled
Each guide separates:
- EU law: what the Directives and the EU courts require.
- National law: where Member States can or do take different approaches.
- Practice: steps we suggest, based on the rules and the analysis on the same page. Itās guidance, not a rule, and not a claim about what bidders or buyers usually do.
- Our analysis: our own reasoning and worked examples. Examples are labelled as made up unless they come from a cited source.
When something is uncertain or depends on interpretation, we say so rather than state it as settled.
Case law
To check whether later judgments change what we say, we search the EU Publications Office database for every judgment and order linked to the relevant Directive. We then read the relevant ones in full. That search depends on how judgments are indexed, so we re-run it at each review.
Numbers and the calculator
Every figure in our worked examples is calculated twice, by two separately written programs in different languages, using exact fractions rather than rounded decimals. The scoring calculator uses the same exact arithmetic. Its tests check it against the worked examples, against thousands of random cases computed by the second program, and against cases where a formula canāt be applied, such as a single bid or a ā¬0 price.
Review dates
Each guide shows when it was last checked against the official texts and when its next review is due. It also lists what would trigger an earlier review, such as an amendment to a Directive or a new judgment. When the law changes, affected pages are updated or clearly marked.
Mistakes
If you find one, please tell us. We correct it and record what changed, and when, on the corrections page.