AG Mengozzi on extension of "in-house" to "public house" procurement exception (C-15/13)

In his Opinion of 23 January 2014 in case C-15/13 Datenlotsen Informationssysteme (not available in English), Advocate General Mengozzi advocated for an extension of the "in-house" public procurement exception beyond its current boundaries under the so-called Teckal doctrine.
 
The AG proposed that the CJEU declares that
A contract concerned with the provision of services which beneficiary, being a contracting authority within the meaning of Directive 2004/18, does not exercise over the entity that provides the services a control similar to that exercised over its own services, but where both entities are subject to the control of an institution that can be classified as a contracting entity within the meaning of that directive, and where both the recipient of the services and the provider thereof conduct the essential part of their activities for the institution that controls them, is a public contract to the extent that it is a written contract between the contractor and the recipient of the services, always provided that such contract has an object which would qualify as the provision of services within the meaning of the directive.
Such a contract is not entitled to an exception to the application of procurement procedures under the EU rules on public procurement unless the controlling entity exercises in an exclusive manner a control similar to that exercised over its own departments both on the beneficiary of the services and on the providing entity, and where both of those entities carry out the essential part of their activities for that controlling entity, or in the case where that contract meets all the requirements for the the exception for public-public cooperation (own translation from Spanish and French).
Therefore, AG Mengozzi suggests a test whereby, if all of the entities involved in the contract would independently qualify for the "in-house" exception in case they were engaged in a vertical contract with the ultimate controlling entity, they can then also benefit from the "public house" exception in their horizontal contractual relationships.
 
If the CJEU follows the approach suggested by AG Mengozzi, it will be extending the "in-house" exception beyond its current limits (where a direct control is required on the part of the contracting entity over the awardee of the contract) and creating a "public house" exception in public procurement--which was anticipated and discussed by Dario Casalini, 'Beyond EU Law: the New "Public House"', in Risvig Hansen et al (eds), EU Procurement Directives--modernisation, growth & innovation (Copenhagen, DJOF, 2012) 151-178.
 
It is also interesting to stress that such "public house" exception has also been created for the future by the new Public Procurement Directive (bound to be transposed by early 2016), which article 12(2) frames it in slightly different terms, indicating that the "in-house" exception:
also applies where a controlled legal person which is a contracting authority awards a contract to its controlling contracting authority, or to another legal person controlled by the same contracting authority, provided that there is no direct private capital participation in the legal person being awarded the public contract with the exception of non-controlling and non-blocking forms of private capital participation required by national legislative provisions, in conformity with the Treaties, which do not exert a decisive influence on the controlled legal person (emphasis added).
It is important to stress that the requirements concerning private capital participation deviate from the standard "in-house" exception and (if adopted) from the "public house" exception, which may create some interpretative difficulties in the future. For now, I guess we need to wait and first see if the CJEU supports the "public house" exception as a first step, before worrying about the confines of a (private)-public house exception...

CJEU consolidates functional approach to customs nomenclature interpretation (C-380/12)

In its Judgment of 23 January 2014 in case C-380/12 X, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) was presented with a request for a preliminary reference on the proper interpretation of certain headings of the applicable customs nomenclature.
 
The case is riddled with technical (biochemical) complications but, in my best understanding of it, the key issues focussed on whether certain washing processes altered or not the molecular structure of a specific type of earth used to decolour edible oils. In the end, the dispute was concerned with a reclassification of that type of (washed) decolourising earth from a heading applicable to natural clays [which included those that had been washed (even with chemical substances eliminating the impurities, without changing the structure of the product)] to a heading applicable to activated natural mineral products (such as activated carbons, which structure has been altered). The impact of such a reclassification based on the alteration of the natural molecular structure of the product was the application of a higher tariff of 5.7% in customs duties. And, consequently, it was litigated.
 
In its Judgment, the CJEU follows its standard approach to this type of (fiendish) issue and makes it clear that it is for domestic courts to reach the final decision on nomenclature classification, but it aims to provide some general criteria to guide their decision.
 
In my view, the indication towards the need for a functional approach, based on the intended use of the products (rather than simply following a strict consideration of the production or treatment processes) seems worth highlighting. Indeed, in its Judgment, the CJEU indicated that:
39 [...] the intended use of a product may also constitute an objective criterion for classification if it is inherent to the product, and that inherent character must be capable of being assessed on the basis of the product’s objective characteristics and properties (see [Case C-183/06 RUMA [2007] ECR I‑1559], paragraph 36; Case C‑123/09 Roeckl Sporthandschuhe [2010] ECR I‑4065, paragraph 28; and [C-568/11 Agroferm [2013] ECR I-0000], paragraph 41).
40 It is apparent from the order for reference that the treatment applied to the products at issue in the main proceedings, batches of decolourising earth, consists in effecting a structural replacement of calcium ions with hydrogen ions in order to increase their adsorption capacity, which makes them suitable for purifying and decolourising edible oils. It is, furthermore, apparent from the observations put forward by the Commission at the hearing – without being contradicted on the point – that that treatment rules out the possibility of decolourising earth for purposes other than the purification and decolouration of edible oils (C-380/12, paras 39-40, emphasis added).
That does not mean that the issue of the actual change of the molecular structure of the product becomes irrelevant. As the CJEU also indicated:
46 [...] the treatment at issue in the main proceedings involves the use of chemical substances, more specifically sulphuric acid, which it is nevertheless for the referring court to verify. Accordingly, assuming that treatment does entail the elimination of impurities, which it is also for the national court to verify in the light of the answer to the first question referred, the decisive criterion for determining whether, under Note 1 to Chapter 25 of the CN, the products at issue must remain classified under CN tariff heading 2508, is whether their structure is changed.
48 The [International Convention on the Harmonised Commodity Description and Coding System, concluded at Brussels on 14 June 1983] Explanatory Notes, [...] despite their lack of binding force, are an important means of ensuring the uniform application of the Common Customs Tariff and, as such, may be regarded as useful aids to its interpretation (Case C‑173/08 Kloosterboer Services [2009] ECR I-5347, paragraph 25, and Agroferm, paragraph 28).
49 In that regard, the HS Explanatory Notes relating to heading 3802 state that ‘[c]arbon and mineral substances are said to be activated when their superficial structure has been modified by appropriate treatment (with heat, chemicals, etc.) in order to make them suitable for certain purposes, such as decolourising, gas or moisture adsorption, catalysis, ion-exchange or filtering’. Those same notes state that heading 3802 does not cover ‘[n]aturally active mineral products (e.g., fuller’s earth), which have not undergone any treatment modifying their superficial structure (Chapter 25)’.
50 Consequently, as rightly pointed out by the Commission, Note 1 to Chapter 25 of the CN, interpreted in the light of the HS Explanatory Notes relating to heading 3802, rules out the possibility that products which have undergone treatment modifying their superficial structure may be classified under CN tariff heading 2508, with the result that they must be classified under CN tariff heading 3802 (C-380/12, paras 46-50, emphasis added).
 
In my view, and if I understood the (technical) reasoning properly, the emphasis on the functional (i.e. intended-use) approach can help overcome truly difficult technical considerations (such as to what extent has the structure actually been modified or not), because the ultimate objective of the treatment given to the decolourising earths was to increase their decolourising properties and made them useless otherwise. Consequently, the CJEU seems to be advocating (in rather convoluted and implicit terms) for an application of the same nomenclature classification to products which are aimed at the same use (i.e., truly competing products).
 
If that is correct, this seems the right approach in order to minimise competitive distortions resulting from the interpretation and application of customs rules. Hence, I think that the functional approach that the CJEU has continued to consolidate in its Judgment in X (decolourising earths) should be welcome, unless I have gotten lost at molecular level disquisitions...

Principle of competition finally consolidated into public procurement directives

The provisional text of the new public procurement Directives has been made available by the European Parliament. In the final version of 15 of January, the principle of competition is finally consolidated in article 18 of the new general Directive in the following terms:
Article 18 - Principles of procurement
1. Contracting authorities shall treat economic operators equally and without discrimination and shall act in a transparent and proportionate manner. The design of the procurement shall not be made with the intention of excluding it from the scope of this Directive or of artificially narrowing competition. Competition shall be considered to be artificially narrowed where the design of the procurement is made with the intention of unduly favouring or disadvantaging certain economic operators.
The explicit inclusion of the principle must be welcome, even if its drafting creates some interpretative uncertainties--particularly in regards to the intentional element ("with the intention of  [...] artificially narrowing competition") or the way in which the presumption linking (intended) discrimination with an actual distortion of competition.
 
In my view, these interpretative uncertainties deserve some clarification and there are sufficient interpretative criteria in the "pre-consolidated" case law concerned with competition in public procurement as to drive the clarification process [Sanchez Graells (2009) 'The Principle of Competition Embedded in EC Public Procurement Directives'). The teleological and functional interpretation of the principle still has to go in the direction of acknowledging that it requires that: public procurement rules have to be interpreted and applied in a pro-competitive way, so that they do not hinder, limit, or distort competition. Contracting entities must refrain from implementing any procurement practices that prevent, restrict or distort competition.
 
At any rate, the explicit consolidation of the principle seems likely to strengthen the use of pro-competitive arguments in public procurement litigation and, hopefully, will drive legal changes. It will be an interesting process to follow closely.

Free movement (of gold) meets consumer protection (C-481/12)

In its Judgment of 16 January 2014 in case C-481/12 Juvelta, the Court of Justice of the EU has issued an interesting decision concerned with the delicate balance between free movement of goods under Article 34 TFEU and the protection of consumers.

In the case at hand, gold jewellery was imported into Lithuania. The golden products had been stamped with the Polish hallmark to indicate their quality and fineness. The Polish and Lithuanian hallmarks differed in that Lithuanian rules require the express indication of the per thousand purity of the gold, whereas the Polish hallmark functions on a scale basis. Aware of such a divergence, the importer of the jewellery had complemented the Polish 'official' hallmark with a 'private mark' that expressly indicated the additional information necessary for Lithuanian consumers to understand the quality of the products. However, Lithuanian authorities were not willing to accept the validity of such 'private' second hallmark and required the products to be 'officially' marked again to comply with Lithuanian standards. The importer considered this an unjustified restriction of its free movement of goods rights and challenged the decision.

The CJEU framed the case within the standard Dassonville formula for the assessment of measures of equivalent effect to quantitative restrictions and offered some interesting insights into the limitations that consumer protection may introduce in that analytical framework. It is worth noting that, according to the CJEU,
23 In order to determine whether an indication of a standard of fineness not provided for by legislation of a Member State provides consumers with equivalent and intelligible information, the Court must take into account the presumed expectations of an average consumer who is reasonably well-informed and reasonably observant and circumspect (see, to that effect, Commission v Ireland, paragraph 32).

24 With regard to the proceedings [...] it should be noted that [...] the articles at issue in the main proceedings were stamped with hallmarks by an independent assay office authorised by the Republic of Poland, in accordance with that State’s legislation.

25 Likewise, [...] it is not disputed that the hallmark stamped on those articles shows their standard of fineness by means of the mark consisting of the numeral ‘3’ and that, in Poland, that mark is intended to denote articles of precious metals whose standard of fineness, expressed as the number of parts by weight of the precious metal in 1 000 parts by weight of the alloy, is 585.

26 It follows that the information provided by that mark is, as far as the articles of precious metal stamped with a hallmark in Poland are concerned, equivalent to that provided by the numerals ‘585’ on a hallmark stamped by an independent assay office authorised in Lithuania, in accordance with that State’s legislation.

27 That said, consideration must also be given to whether the marking of the numeral ‘3’ on the hallmarks stamped on the articles at issue in the main proceedings provides information intelligible to an average Lithuanian consumer who is reasonably well-informed and reasonably observant and circumspect.

28 In that regard, it must be held that it is probable that that mark is not intelligible to such a consumer, since such a person is not, in principle, deemed to know the Polish system of indicating standards of fineness for articles of precious metal.
29 However, although the restrictive effects of the legislation at issue can thus be justified by the objective of ensuring effective protection for Lithuanian consumers, and providing them with information relating to standards of fineness for articles of precious metal imported into Lithuania which are intelligible to them, such justification can be accepted only if that legislation is proportionate to the objective pursued, that is to say if, while appropriate in order to fulfil that objective, it does not go beyond what is necessary to attain it (C-481/12 at paras 23-29, emphasis added).
 
In Juvelta, then, the CJEU seems to have inserted an intermediate test of adequacy for consumer protection purposes that may need to be applied before the rule of reason analysis of the restrictive measure and in a cumulative manner. Hence, it seems that in situations where the application of free movement rules may leave consumers unprotected, the CJEU may be willing to set a limitation on the standard criteria of mutual recognition.
 
In general, then, it seems that the additional consideration of consumer protection/expectations comes to consolidate a 'suitability check' applied to the free movement rules (not to the measure having equivalent effect, which is still subjected to the traditional proportionality analysis) and, in that regard, seems fit for the purpose of ensuring overall consistency of the EU internal market rules--which, ultimately, should aim to protect consumers as well as allowing them to benefit from the increased efficiency that market competition brings about.
 
It may be that Juvelta does not create a revolution in the way free movement rules are applied (as such considerations had already occasionally been taken into account by the CJEU to a certain extent), but it may have spelled out more clearly the analytical path through which measures having equivalent effect against free movement of goods need to be assessed. In my view, this is a positive (incremental) development.

"National brands" and State aid: AG Whatelet on investing in "State branding" (C-533 & 536/12)

In his Opinion of 15 January 2014 in joined cases C-533/12 P and C-536/12 P SNCM v Corsica Ferries France, Advocate General Whatelet has addressed an interesting (and creative) argument concerning the protection of a "national brand" as a justification for the granting of public support that would otherwise constitute illegal State aid under Article 107 TFEU.

In the case at hand, and as part of a privatisation process, the French Republic had allegedly agreed to assume the costs of payment of excessive compensations for termination of employment and retirement of certain employees of a public undertaking. Regardless of the fact that the existence of such excessive compensations was also challenged, the French Republic claimed the protection of the national brand (ie, the reputation of French business conglomerates) as a justification for such public support to the privatised undertaking (or, rectius, its new owners). France considered that any social unrest derived from severance and pension payments within the context of the privatisation process would trigger significant strikes that would, in turn, create the image that the French State and its industrial conglomerates are not a reliable trading partner. As the argument goes, the protection of future business by French companies (or companies more closely linked to the French State) would justify such a (reputational) investment under the private investor test and, consequently, would exclude the existence of illegal State aid under Article 107 TFEU. More specifically, the French arguments were as follows:
72 . Furthermore, the French Republic considers that the payment of additional compensations is necessary to protect the brand image of the state. In support of his thesis, it refers to the risk that sympathy strikes would spread throughout the public sector and would have the effect of paralyzing the economic activity of enterprises in this sector.
73 . In this context, the French Republic claims that an epidemic of strikes would generate serious economic losses to the state. It refers to the abrupt disruption of contractual relationships between the companies at strike and their suppliers and customers, as well as to payment and supply difficulties that would force non-professional clients of public companies to switch to competing private companies.
74 . The French Republic therefore claims to have considered the avoidance of these dire economic consequences as the indirect material benefit that the state wished to obtain from the payment of additional compensations (Opinion in C-533 & 536/12 P, own translation from Spanish).
AG Whatelet disagrees with this argument very clearly and presents a set of very interesting remarks in paragraphs 76 to 96 of his Opinion. In short summary, I think that the most remarkable points of AG Whatelet's wrap-up of the (limited) existing case law concerned with the existence and protection (through investment) of a "national brand" are the following: 
  1. In the absence of specific circumstances and a specially compelling motivation, protecting the brand image of the state as a global investor in the economy cannot be a sufficient justification to demonstrate the long-term economic rationality of the assumption of additional costs such as additional employment and retirement-related compensation (para 78).
  2. As AG Jacobs and CJEU made clear in joined cases C-278/92, C-279/92 and C-280/92 Spain v Commission, it is difficult to accept that a state holding would worry so much about the damage that its global image would suffer as a result of the failure of one of its companies (or as a result of social unrest related to its winding up or bankruptcy) so as to offer, just for that reason, huge sums as an incentive for a private company to take charge of it (paras 83-86).
  3. The same position was held by the GC in joined cases T-129/95 Neue Maxhütte Stahlwerke and Lech-Stahlwerke v Commission, where it also considered that "It is not credible that Bavaria have been obligated to pay a sum of money to a private company [...] to entice it to restructure [the company in question] in order to prevent that the bankruptcy of the latter could harm severely the reputation of the Land" (paras 87-90).
Hence, AG Whatelet concludes that, in the case at hand,
the General Court did not commit any error of law in concluding that "in the absence of special circumstances and without a particularly compelling motivation, the protection of the brand image of a Member State as a global investor in a market economy cannot constitute sufficient justification to demonstrate the long-term economic rationality of the assumption of additional costs such as additional severance pay" (Opinion in C-533 & 536/12 P, at para 91, own translation from Spanish).
And, as a matter of general principle, clearly indicates that 
I find it highly unlikely that the considerations made so far by the States on their brand image as global investors in a market economy can eventually circumvent the qualification of their decisions as State aid in light of the private investor test [...] the concerns raised by the Member States in relation to their brand image as global investors in a market economy, however noble they may be for other reasons, are far from those of a private investor, whether they relate to 'political costs' (in addition to the economic and social costs) of closing a business, "trade union or political pressure", the location of the failing firm in "in an area in social crisis" or, as in this case, the risk of sympathy strikes that would spread throughout the public sector. These considerations are absent of any prospect of profitability, even in the long term (Opinion in C-533 & 536/12 P, at paras 92 and 94, footnotes omitted and own translation from Spanish).
Ultimately, the rationale for this line of thought is that State aid rules' effectiveness would be significantly impaired if Member States can justify their public support decisions on the basis of the construction of their own "national brand". In my view, this is a very interesting Opinion and it is to be hoped that the CJEU will follow it and consolidate a very restrictive approach towards this type of justifications in the field of EU State aid law.