Must the buyer publish its scoring formula?

Insights · Evaluation & award · Published 10 October 2026. This analysis was generated with the help of an AI system. Its legal references were checked against the official EU texts listed under Sources on 10 October 2026. It describes the law as it stood on that date. Not legal advice.

Short answer. No general rule of EU law makes the buyer publish the method it uses to turn bids into points, and that includes the price formula. That was the Court’s answer in TNS Dimarso (C‑6/15) in 2016, and in the later case law we searched we found nothing that changes it. But the same judgment sets limits that are more useful to a bidder than they look. The weighting has to be published and respected. The method normally has to be settled before the bids are opened. And an unpublished method can’t quietly change what the published weighting means. If the formula isn’t in the documents, ask. If you lose, ask how the points were worked out.

EU law · What Dimarso decided

The case concerned a Belgian service contract under the old Directive 2004/18/EC. The call for tenders named two award criteria, quality and price, each marked “(50/100)”. The evaluation committee then graded quality on a scale running from “high” through “satisfactory” to “low”, with no scale for price (paragraph 33).

The Court’s answer has two halves.

No duty to publish the method. Neither Article 53(2) of Directive 2004/18 nor any other provision obliges the buyer to publish “the method of evaluation” it will use to assess tenders against the criteria and their weighting (paragraph 27), and no such general obligation follows from the case law (paragraph 28). An evaluation committee needs “some leeway”, and the buyer must be able to adapt its method “in accordance with the circumstances of the case” (paragraphs 29–30).

Limits on the method. The same judgment fences that leeway in:

• Weighting comes first. A buyer may not, in principle, apply weighting rules it hasn’t brought to the tenderers’ attention (paragraph 24). The relative weighting must be defined from the start and can’t change during the procedure (paragraph 25).
• Not after the bids are opened. To avoid any risk of favouritism, the method “cannot, in principle, be determined after the opening of the tenders”. The exception is where fixing it earlier was not possible “for demonstrable reasons” (paragraph 31).
• No rewriting the weighting. Whenever the method is set, it can’t alter the award criteria or their relative weighting (paragraph 32). An unpublished scale is allowed, but not one that changes the published weighting (paragraph 36).
• Sub-criteria weightings, if fixed after the deadline, must meet three conditions: no change to the criteria, nothing that would have affected how tenders were prepared, and no discrimination (paragraph 26).

On the facts, the Court pointed out that the committee’s approach seemed capable of giving price “decisive weight” over quality, despite the published 50/50 split, and left it to the national court to check (paragraph 35). That is the practical heart of the case: a method nobody saw can still breach a weighting everybody saw.

What has changed since 2016

Directive 2014/24/EU replaced Directive 2004/18. Article 67(5) requires the documents to state the relative weighting of each criterion, and Article 67(4) requires criteria that allow tenders to be verified effectively. Neither provision says anything express about the evaluation method or a price formula. Dimarso therefore still describes the EU position, as far as the Directive and the cases below show.

Our analysis · How we searched the later case law

We wanted to know whether any later judgment narrowed Dimarso. On 10 October 2026 we:

1. Queried the EU Publications Office database (the source behind EUR-Lex) for every judgment and order of the Court of Justice and the General Court that the database links to Directive 2014/24/EU, and every one linked to Directive 2004/18/EC dated on or after 14 July 2016, the day of Dimarso. That gave 194 decisions.
2. Downloaded the official English text of each. 154 have one. The other 40, mostly orders, are available only in other languages.
3. Searched the 154 texts for Articles 67 (2014/24) or 53 (2004/18) combined with terms such as “method of evaluation”, “formula”, “weighting” and “sub-criteria”, and separately for any citation of C‑6/15. We then read every match.

The search found no later decision in this set that requires the evaluation method or the formula to be published, and none that cites Dimarso. What it did surface are judgments that matter for the same question from other angles:

• Montte (C‑546/16): the documents may set a minimum quality score that knocks tenders out before price is scored, even if few tenders remain. In that case the price scale was in the documents, which shows how much a buyer can choose to disclose.
• Antea Polska (C‑54/21): descriptive quality criteria are allowed only if they come with indications that let the buyer assess tenders specifically and objectively (ruling, point 3).
• EUIPO v European Dynamics (C‑376/16 P) and Instituto Cervantes (C‑534/23 P): a buyer doesn’t have to give a losing bidder a detailed comparative analysis. But where the documents attach specific quantified weightings to criteria or sub-criteria, transparency requires a quantified evaluation for each of them (C‑376/16 P, paragraph 63; C‑534/23 P, paragraphs 125–126). Where components inside a sub-criterion had no weighting of their own, no breakdown per component was required (C‑534/23 P, paragraphs 127–128).

The last two judgments, and Proximus v Council (T‑117/17), in which the General Court upheld a formula comparing each price with the sum of all bids, concern purchases by EU institutions under the EU’s Financial Regulation, not the Directive. They are useful for how the EU courts think about scoring, but we haven’t found a judgment that applies them to Directive contracts. Treat them as indications.

Limits of the search. It relies on how the Publications Office links judgments to the Directives. A decision that isn’t linked wouldn’t appear. 40 decisions had no English text. Advocates General’s opinions and national case law were not searched. National rules may require more transparency than EU law, so check the law of the country where the contract is awarded.

Practice · What this means when you bid

1. Look for the method, not just the weighting. If the documents give “price 40%” but no formula, you don’t yet know what a euro is worth in points. Different formulas with the same weighting can produce different winners (see how your price becomes points).
2. Ask before the deadline. A clarification request is the cheapest way to find out. If you ask in good time, the answer has to go to every tenderer at the latest six days before the deadline, or four in an accelerated procedure (Article 53(2) of Directive 2014/24). A late or missing answer to a significant question can require the buyer to extend the deadline (Article 47(3)).
3. Check the method against the weighting. If the formula is published, or emerges later, test whether it respects the published split. A method that leaves almost no spread in quality scores, or a very wide spread in price scores, can give price more weight in practice than on paper. That was the concern in Dimarso (paragraph 35). The scoring calculator shows the spread for four common formulas.
4. Ask when the method was fixed. After the award, a written request entitles an admissible tenderer to the characteristics and relative advantages of the winning tender (Article 55(2)). Ask for the scores per criterion and sub-criterion, how price was converted into points, and when that method was decided. A method settled after the bids were opened is, in principle, not allowed (Dimarso, paragraph 31).
5. Raise concerns early. A formula that worries you is easier to question before you submit than after you lose. Review deadlines can be short (see after the award decision).

What this analysis doesn’t cover

Utilities and defence contracts, which have their own Directives. National rules on publishing formulas. Purchases by EU institutions, except where we cite them as indications. If a scoring dispute matters to you, a procurement lawyer in the country concerned can tell you how national courts apply these principles.