Federal Act
on Public Procurement
(PPA)

This Act ap­plies to the award­ing of pub­lic con­tracts by con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies sub­ject to it both with­in and out­side the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies.

The pur­pose of this Act is to en­sure:

a.

the cost-ef­fi­cient use of pub­lic funds in a man­ner that is eco­nom­ic­ally, eco­lo­gic­ally and so­cially sus­tain­able;

b.

the trans­par­ency of the award pro­ced­ure;

c.

equal treat­ment and non-dis­crim­in­a­tion of ten­der­ers;

d.

the pro­mo­tion of ef­fect­ive, fair com­pet­i­tion among ten­der­ers, in par­tic­u­lar by means of meas­ures against un­law­ful agree­ments af­fect­ing com­pet­i­tion and meas­ures against cor­rup­tion.

In this Act:

a.

ten­der­er means an in­di­vidu­al or leg­al en­tity un­der private or pub­lic law, or a group of such per­sons or en­tit­ies, which sup­plies goods, work or ser­vices or which ap­plies to par­ti­cip­ate in a pub­lic tender, the del­eg­a­tion of a pub­lic task or the grant­ing of a con­ces­sion;

b.

pub­licun­der­tak­ing means an un­der­tak­ing over which pub­lic au­thor­it­ies may dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly ex­er­cise a dom­in­ant in­flu­ence by vir­tue of their own­er­ship, their fin­an­cial par­ti­cip­a­tion, or the rules which gov­ern it; a dom­in­ant in­flu­ence is pre­sumed to ex­ist if the un­der­tak­ing's as­sets are pre­dom­in­antly fin­anced by the state or by oth­er pub­lic un­der­tak­ings, if its man­age­ment is sub­ject to su­per­vi­sion by the state or by oth­er pub­lic un­der­tak­ings, or if its ad­min­is­trat­ive, ma­na­geri­al or su­per­vis­ory bod­ies are made up pre­dom­in­antly of mem­bers ap­poin­ted by the state or by oth­er pub­lic un­der­tak­ings;

c.

scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies means the scope of ap­plic­a­tion of Switzer­land's in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions con­cern­ing pub­lic pro­cure­ment;

d.

terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment means the man­dat­ory pro­vi­sions of the Swiss Code of Ob­lig­a­tions⁶ con­cern­ing the em­ploy­ment con­tract, norm­at­ive pro­vi­sions of col­lect­ive and stand­ard em­ploy­ment con­tracts or, in the ab­sence of these, the em­ploy­ment con­di­tions cus­tom­ary in the place of work and in the sec­tor;

e.

work­place health and safety reg­u­la­tionsare pro­vi­sions of pub­lic em­ploy­ment law, in­clud­ing the pro­vi­sions of the Fed­er­al Act of 13 March 1964⁷ on Em­ploy­ment in Busi­ness, Trade and In­dustry and the re­lated im­ple­ment­ing le­gis­la­tion, as well as the pro­vi­sions on ac­ci­dent pre­ven­tion.

¹ The fol­low­ing are sub­ject to this Act as con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies:

a.

ad­min­is­trat­ive units of the cent­ral and de­cent­ral­ised Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 2 of the Fed­er­al Act of 21 March 1997⁸ on the Or­gan­isa­tion of the Gov­ern­ment and the Ad­min­is­tra­tion and the as­so­ci­ated im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions that ap­ply at the time of the in­vit­a­tion to tender;

b.

fed­er­al ju­di­cial au­thor­it­ies;

c.

the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Switzer­land;

d.

Par­lia­ment­ary Ser­vices.

² Pub­lic and private un­der­tak­ings that provide pub­lic ser­vices and that have ex­clus­ive or spe­cial rights are sub­ject to this Act if they carry out activ­it­ies in one of the fol­low­ing sec­tors in Switzer­land:

a.

the pro­vi­sion or op­er­a­tion of fixed net­works in­ten­ded to provide a ser­vice to the pub­lic in con­nec­tion with the pro­duc­tion, trans­port or dis­tri­bu­tion of drink­ing wa­ter, or the sup­ply of drink­ing wa­ter to such net­works;

b.

the pro­vi­sion or op­er­a­tion of fixed net­works in­ten­ded to provide a ser­vice to the pub­lic in con­nec­tion with the pro­duc­tion, trans­port or dis­tri­bu­tion of elec­tri­city, or the sup­ply of elec­tri­city to such net­works;

c.

the pro­vi­sion of air­ports or oth­er ter­min­al fa­cil­it­ies to air car­ri­ers;

d.

the pro­vi­sion of in­land ports or oth­er ter­min­al fa­cil­it­ies to in­land wa­ter­way car­ri­ers;

e.

the pro­vi­sion of postal ser­vices in the re­served ser­vices area in ac­cord­ance with the Postal Ser­vices Act of 17 Decem­ber 2010⁹;

f.

the pro­vi­sion or op­er­a­tion of rail­ways, in­clud­ing the traffic there­on;

g.

the pro­vi­sion or op­er­a­tion of fixed net­works in­ten­ded to provide a ser­vice to the pub­lic in con­nec­tion with the pro­duc­tion, trans­port or dis­tri­bu­tion of gas or heat, or the sup­ply of gas or heat to such net­works; or

h.

the ex­ploit­a­tion of a geo­graph­ic­al area for the pur­pose of ex­plor­ing for or ex­tract­ing oil, gas, coal or oth­er sol­id fuels.

³ The con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies un­der para­graph 2 are sub­ject to this Act only in the case of pro­cure­ments for the area of activ­ity de­scribed, but not for their oth­er activ­it­ies.

⁴ If a third party awards a pub­lic con­tract on be­half of one or more con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies, this third party is sub­ject to this Act in the same way as the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity it rep­res­ents.

¹ If sev­er­al con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies sub­ject to fed­er­al and can­ton­al law par­ti­cip­ate in a pro­cure­ment, the law of the com­munity whose con­tract­ing au­thor­ity provides the most fin­an­cing ap­plies. If the total can­ton­al share out­weighs the fed­er­al share, this Act does not ap­ply.

² Sev­er­al con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies in­volved in a pro­cure­ment may, by mu­tu­al agree­ment, make a joint pro­cure­ment sub­ject to the law of one of the con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies in­volved, in derog­a­tion from the above prin­ciples.

³ Pub­lic and private un­der­tak­ings that have been gran­ted ex­clus­ive or spe­cial rights by the Con­fed­er­a­tion or that per­form tasks in the na­tion­al in­terest may choose wheth­er to sub­ject their pro­cure­ments to the law of their place of busi­ness or to fed­er­al law.

¹ Un­der this Act, ten­der­ers from Switzer­land are per­mit­ted to sub­mit a tender, as are ten­der­ers from coun­tries with which Switzer­land has un­der­taken to grant mar­ket ac­cess on a con­trac­tu­al basis, provided such coun­tries have un­der­taken the same com­mit­ment to Switzer­land.

² Out­side the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies, for­eign ten­der­ers are per­mit­ted to sub­mit a tender if their coun­tries of ori­gin grant re­cip­roc­al rights or if the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity so per­mits.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall keep a list of the coun­tries that have un­der­taken to grant mar­ket ac­cess to Switzer­land. The list shall be up­dated peri­od­ic­ally.

¹ If there is ef­fect­ive com­pet­i­tion in the mar­ket for a sec­tor un­der Art­icle 4 para­graph 2, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil, act­ing on a pro­pos­al from a con­tract­ing au­thor­ity or the In­ter­can­t­on­al Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Body (In­öB), shall is­sue an or­din­ance ex­empt­ing pro­cure­ments in this mar­ket from be­ing sub­ject to this Act in whole or in part.

² Be­fore is­su­ing its or­din­ance, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall con­sult the Com­pet­i­tion Com­mis­sion, the In­ter­can­t­on­al Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Body and the busi­ness circles con­cerned. The Com­pet­i­tion Com­mis­sion may pub­lish its ex­pert opin­ion, provided it pays due re­gard to com­mer­cial secrecy.

¹ A pub­lic con­tract is a con­tract that is entered in­to by the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity and the ten­der­er for the per­form­ance of a pub­lic task. It in­volves the pay­ment of money in re­turn for the sup­ply of goods, work or ser­vices, with these char­ac­ter­ist­ic sup­plies be­ing provided by the ten­der­er.

² A dis­tinc­tion is made between the fol­low­ing sup­plies:

a.

con­struc­tion work;

b.

sup­plies of goods;

c.

ser­vices.

³ Mixed con­tracts com­prise vari­ous sup­plies in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2 and form an over­all trans­ac­tion. The over­all trans­ac­tion is cat­egor­ised based on the fin­an­cially pre­dom­in­ant sup­ply. Sup­plies may not be mixed or bundled with the in­ten­tion or ef­fect of cir­cum­vent­ing the pro­vi­sions of this Act.

⁴ With­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies, sup­plies in ac­cord­ance with An­nexes 1 to 3 are sub­ject to this Act if they reach the threshold val­ues in sec­tion 1 of An­nex 4.

⁵ Pub­lic con­tracts out­side the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies and the spe­cial pro­vi­sions ap­plic­able thereto are lis­ted in An­nex 5.

The del­eg­a­tion of a pub­lic task or the grant­ing of a con­ces­sion is deemed to be a pub­lic con­tract if it gives the ten­der­er ex­clus­ive or spe­cial rights which the ten­der­er ex­er­cises in the pub­lic in­terest and for which the ten­der­er re­ceives re­mu­ner­a­tion or com­pens­a­tion dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly. The pro­vi­sions of spe­cial le­gis­la­tion re­main re­served.

¹ This Act does not ap­ply to:

a.

the pro­cure­ment of goods, work and ser­vices with a view to com­mer­cial sale or re­sale, or with a view to use in the pro­duc­tion or sup­ply of goods, work and ser­vices for com­mer­cial sale or re­sale;

b.

the ac­quis­i­tion, rent­al or leas­ing of land, build­ings and in­stall­a­tions, and the cor­res­pond­ing rights thereto;

c.

the grant­ing of fin­an­cial as­sist­ance in ac­cord­ance with the Fed­er­al Act of 5 Oc­to­ber 1990¹⁰ on Fin­an­cial As­sist­ance and Sub­sidies;

d.

con­tracts for fin­an­cial ser­vices re­lat­ing to the is­su­ance, pur­chase, sale, trans­fer or man­age­ment of se­cur­it­ies or oth­er fin­an­cial in­stru­ments and cent­ral bank ser­vices;

e.

con­tracts with in­sti­tu­tions for the dis­abled, work in­teg­ra­tion or­gan­isa­tions, char­it­ies and pen­al in­sti­tu­tions;

f.

con­tracts un­der per­son­nel law;

g.

the fol­low­ing leg­al ser­vices:

1.

rep­res­ent­a­tion of the Con­fed­er­a­tion or a fed­er­al pub­lic cor­por­a­tion by a law­yer in na­tion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al ar­bit­ra­tion, con­cili­ation or court pro­ceed­ings and as­so­ci­ated ser­vices,

2.

leg­al ad­vice from a law­yer with re­gard to pos­sible pro­ceed­ings un­der num­ber 1 if there is a high prob­ab­il­ity that the mat­ter to which the ad­vice relates will be­come the sub­ject of such pro­ceed­ings;

h.

pro­cure­ments:

1.

with­in the frame­work of in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­it­ari­an emer­gency as­sist­ance and ag­ri­cul­tur­al and nu­tri­tion­al sup­port,

2.

in ac­cord­ance with the spe­cif­ic pro­ced­ures or con­di­tions set out in an in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ment re­gard­ing the sta­tion­ing of troops or the joint im­ple­ment­a­tion of a pro­ject by sig­nat­ory states,

3.

car­ried out in ac­cord­ance with the spe­cif­ic pro­ced­ures or con­di­tions of an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tion or co-fin­anced by in­ter­na­tion­al fin­an­cial as­sist­ance, loans or oth­er forms of as­sist­ance if the pro­ced­ures or con­di­tions ap­plic­able would be in­com­pat­ible with this Act,

4.

with­in the frame­work of in­ter­na­tion­al co­oper­a­tion, provided that an equi­val­ent loc­al pro­ced­ure is fol­lowed in the re­cip­i­ent state;

i.

pub­lic pen­sion funds of the Con­fed­er­a­tion.

² The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity has to pre­pare doc­u­ment­a­tion on each con­tract awar­ded in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 let­ter h.

³ In ad­di­tion, this Act does not ap­ply to the pro­cure­ment of goods, work or ser­vices:

a.

from ten­der­ers that have an ex­clus­ive right to provide such goods, work or ser­vices;

b.

from oth­er, leg­ally in­de­pend­ent con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies which are them­selves sub­ject to pro­cure­ment law, provided that these con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies do not provide these goods, work and ser­vices in com­pet­i­tion with private ten­der­ers;

c.

from de­pend­ent or­gan­isa­tion­al units of the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity;

d.

from ten­der­ers over which the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity ex­er­cises con­trol identic­al to the con­trol over its own units, in­so­far as these ten­der­ers provide their goods, work or ser­vices for the most part for the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity.

⁴ Fur­ther­more, this Act does not ap­ply to pub­lic con­tracts:

a.

if this is deemed ne­ces­sary for the pro­tec­tion and main­ten­ance of ex­tern­al or in­tern­al se­cur­ity or pub­lic or­der;

b.

in­so­far as this is ne­ces­sary for the pro­tec­tion of hu­man health or life, or of flora and fauna;

c.

in­so­far as ten­der­ing would in­fringe in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty rights.

When award­ing pub­lic con­tracts, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall ob­serve the fol­low­ing pro­ced­ur­al prin­ciples:

a.

It shall carry out award pro­ced­ures trans­par­ently, ob­ject­ively and im­par­tially.

b.

It shall take meas­ures against con­flicts of in­terest, un­law­ful agree­ments af­fect­ing com­pet­i­tion and against cor­rup­tion.

c.

It shall en­sure equal treat­ment of ten­der­ers at all stages of the pro­ced­ure.

d.

It shall dis­pense with bid­ding rounds.

e.

It shall safe­guard the con­fid­en­tial nature of the in­form­a­tion provided by ten­der­ers.

¹ For goods, work and ser­vices to be provided in Switzer­land, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall award a pub­lic con­tract only to ten­der­ers that com­ply with the work­place health and safety reg­u­la­tions and the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment ap­plic­able at the place of per­form­ance, the no­ti­fic­a­tion and au­thor­isa­tion du­ties in ac­cord­ance with the Fed­er­al Act of 17 June 2005¹¹ on Meas­ures to Com­bat Il­leg­al Em­ploy­ment (IEA) and the pro­vi­sions on the equal treat­ment of men and wo­men in terms of equal pay.

² For goods, work and ser­vices to be provided abroad, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall award a pub­lic con­tract only to ten­der­ers that com­ply as a min­im­um with the Core Con­ven­tions of the In­ter­na­tion­al La­bour Or­gan­iz­a­tion (ILO) in ac­cord­ance with An­nex 6. In ad­di­tion, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may re­quire com­pli­ance with oth­er im­port­ant in­ter­na­tion­al la­bour stand­ards, as well as ap­pro­pri­ate evid­ence, and may ar­range for checks to be car­ried out.

³ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall award a pub­lic con­tract only to ten­der­ers that com­ply as a min­im­um with the leg­al pro­vi­sions on the pro­tec­tion of the en­vir­on­ment and the con­ser­va­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources ap­plic­able at the place of per­form­ance; in Switzer­land, these in­clude the pro­vi­sions of Swiss en­vir­on­ment­al law, and abroad the in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions for the pro­tec­tion of the en­vir­on­ment des­ig­nated by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

⁴ Sub­con­tract­ors are ob­liged to com­ply with the re­quire­ments set out in para­graphs 1 to 3. These ob­lig­a­tions must be in­cluded in the agree­ments between ten­der­ers and sub­con­tract­ors.

⁵ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may check com­pli­ance with the re­quire­ments set out in para­graphs 1 to 3 or out­source the task, provided this task was not del­eg­ated to an au­thor­ity gov­erned by spe­cial le­gis­la­tion or an­oth­er suit­able body, in par­tic­u­lar a su­per­vis­ory body with equal rep­res­ent­a­tion. The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may provide the au­thor­ity or su­per­vis­ory body with the ne­ces­sary in­form­a­tion and doc­u­ments for car­ry­ing out these checks. The ten­der­er has to provide the evid­ence re­quired upon re­quest.

⁶ The au­thor­it­ies and su­per­vis­ory bod­ies re­spons­ible for en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with the re­quire­ments set out in para­graphs 1 to 3 re­port to the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity on the res­ults of the checks and on any meas­ures taken.

¹ Per­sons may not par­ti­cip­ate in the award pro­ced­ure on the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity's be­half or in a pan­el of ex­perts if they:

a.

have a per­son­al in­terest in a con­tract;

b.

are con­nec­ted to a ten­der­er or a mem­ber of one of its gov­ern­ing bod­ies by mar­riage or re­gistered part­ner­ship, or co­hab­it de facto with this party;

c.

are re­lated to a ten­der­er or a mem­ber of one of its gov­ern­ing bod­ies by blood or by mar­riage in a dir­ect line or col­lat­er­ally to the third de­gree;

d.

are rep­res­ent­at­ives of a ten­der­er or worked for a ten­der­er on the same mat­ter; or

e.

lack the in­de­pend­ence ne­ces­sary to carry out pub­lic pro­cure­ments for oth­er reas­ons.

² A re­cus­al re­quest must be sub­mit­ted im­me­di­ately after the reas­on for re­cus­al be­comes known.

³ De­cisions on re­cus­al re­quests are made by the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity or the pan­el of ex­perts, ex­clud­ing the per­son con­cerned.

¹ Ten­der­ers that were in­volved in the pre­par­a­tion of an award pro­ced­ure are not per­mit­ted to sub­mit a tender if the com­pet­it­ive ad­vant­age that they gain can­not be off­set by ap­pro­pri­ate means and if the ex­clu­sion does not jeop­ard­ise ef­fect­ive com­pet­i­tion between ten­der­ers.

² Ap­pro­pri­ate means of off­set­ting the com­pet­it­ive ad­vant­age in­clude in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

the dis­clos­ure of all ma­ter­i­al in­form­a­tion about the pre­par­at­ory work;

b.

the dis­clos­ure of the parties in­volved in the pre­par­at­ory work;

c.

the ex­ten­sion of min­im­um dead­lines.

³ Any mar­ket cla­ri­fic­a­tion by the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity pri­or to the pub­lic in­vit­a­tion to tender does not lead to pri­or in­volve­ment of the ten­der­ers in ques­tion. The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity dis­closes the res­ults of the mar­ket cla­ri­fic­a­tion in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall es­tim­ate the prob­able value of the con­tract.

² A pub­lic con­tract may not be split up in or­der to cir­cum­vent pro­vi­sions of this Act.

³ When es­tim­at­ing the value of the con­tract, all of the goods, work and ser­vices to be put out to tender, as well as re­mu­ner­a­tion that is closely re­lated ma­ter­i­ally or leg­ally, must be taken in­to ac­count. All re­mu­ner­a­tion com­pon­ents must be taken in­to ac­count, in­clud­ing ex­ten­sion op­tions and op­tions for sub­sequent con­tracts, as well as all ex­pec­ted premi­ums, fees, com­mis­sions and in­terest, ex­clud­ing value ad­ded tax.

⁴ In the case of fixed-term con­tracts, the con­tract value is cal­cu­lated on the basis of the total re­mu­ner­a­tion over the en­tire term, in­clud­ing any ex­ten­sion op­tions. As a rule, the fixed term may not ex­ceed 5 years. A longer term may be en­vis­aged in jus­ti­fied cases.

⁵ For open-ended con­tracts, the con­tract value is cal­cu­lated by mul­tiply­ing the monthly re­mu­ner­a­tion by 48.

⁶ In the case of con­tracts for goods, work or ser­vices re­quired on a re­cur­ring basis, the con­tract value is cal­cu­lated on the basis of the re­mu­ner­a­tion paid for such goods, work or ser­vices dur­ing the last 12 months or, in the case of an ini­tial con­tract, on the basis of the es­tim­ated re­quire­ments over the next 12 months.

¹ The choice of pro­ced­ure de­pends on the value of the con­tract and the thresholds in ac­cord­ance with An­nex 4. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil peri­od­ic­ally ad­justs the thresholds in line with in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions after con­sult­ing the In­ter­can­t­on­al Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Body.

² The Con­fed­er­a­tion guar­an­tees the par­ti­cip­a­tion of the can­tons in any ad­just­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions with re­gard to the thresholds.

³ If sev­er­al con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies sub­ject to this Act, each with dif­fer­ent thresholds, par­ti­cip­ate in a pro­cure­ment, the thresholds of the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity that provides the most fin­an­cing ap­ply to the en­tire pro­cure­ment.

⁴ If the total value of sev­er­al con­struc­tion work items lis­ted in sec­tion 1 of An­nex 1 for the real­isa­tion of a struc­ture reaches the threshold for the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies, the pro­vi­sions of this Act that gov­ern pro­cure­ments with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies ap­ply. However, if the value of each in­di­vidu­al con­struc­tion work item is less than CHF 2 mil­lion and the total value of these items does not ex­ceed 20% of the struc­ture's total value, they are sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions for pro­cure­ments out­side the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies (de min­imisclause).

⁵ The ap­plic­able pro­ced­ure for con­struc­tion work out­side the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies is de­term­ined on the basis of the value of the in­di­vidu­al con­struc­tion work items.

De­pend­ing on the value of the con­tract and the thresholds, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may choose to award pub­lic con­tracts by open pro­ced­ure, se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure, in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure or dir­ect award pro­ced­ure.

¹ In the open pro­ced­ure, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity is­sues a pub­lic in­vit­a­tion tender.

² All ten­der­ers may sub­mit a tender.

¹ In the se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity is­sues a pub­lic in­vit­a­tion to tender and in­vites the ten­der­ers to sub­mit a re­quest to par­ti­cip­ate first.

² The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity se­lects the ten­der­ers that may sub­mit a tender based on their eli­gib­il­ity.

³ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may lim­it the num­ber of ten­der­ers per­mit­ted to tender, provided that ef­fect­ive com­pet­i­tion is main­tained. If pos­sible, at least three ten­der­ers are per­mit­ted to sub­mit tenders.

¹ The in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure ap­plies to pub­lic con­tracts out­side the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies in ac­cord­ance with the thresholds in An­nex 4.

² In the in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity in­vites the ten­der­ers of its choice to sub­mit tenders without launch­ing a pub­lic in­vit­a­tion to tender. It pre­pares tender doc­u­ment­a­tion for this pur­pose. If pos­sible, at least three tenders are ob­tained.

³ An in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure without ob­serving the thresholds may be used for the pro­cure­ment of weapons, am­muni­tion, war ma­ter­i­al and, provided they are es­sen­tial for de­fence and se­cur­ity pur­poses, oth­er sup­plies of goods, con­struc­tion work, ser­vices and re­search or de­vel­op­ment ser­vices.

¹ In the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity awards a pub­lic con­tract dir­ectly without an in­vit­a­tion to tender. The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity is en­titled to ob­tain com­par­at­ive quotes and to con­duct ne­go­ti­ations.

² The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may award a con­tract us­ing the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure ir­re­spect­ive of the threshold value if one of the fol­low­ing con­di­tions is met:

a.

In the open, se­lect­ive or in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure, no tenders or re­quests to par­ti­cip­ate are re­ceived, no tender meets the es­sen­tial re­quire­ments of the tender or the tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions, or no ten­der­er meets the eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia.

b.

There are suf­fi­cient in­dic­a­tions that all of the tenders re­ceived in the open, se­lect­ive or in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure are based on un­law­ful agree­ments af­fect­ing com­pet­i­tion.

c.

Due to the tech­nic­al or artist­ic fea­tures of the con­tract or for reas­ons of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty pro­tec­tion, only one ten­der­er is eli­gible and there is no ap­pro­pri­ate al­tern­at­ive.

d.

Due to un­fore­see­able events, pro­cure­ment be­comes so ur­gent that, even with shortened dead­lines, an open, se­lect­ive or in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure can­not be car­ried out.

e.

A change of ten­der­er for goods, work or ser­vices to re­place, sup­ple­ment or ex­tend sup­plies already provided is not pos­sible for eco­nom­ic or tech­nic­al reas­ons, would cause con­sid­er­able dif­fi­culties or would en­tail sub­stan­tial ad­di­tion­al costs.

f.

The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity is pro­cur­ing ori­gin­al products (pro­to­types) or new types of sup­plies which are pro­duced or de­veloped at its re­quest as part of a re­search, tri­al, study or new de­vel­op­ment con­tract.

g.

The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity is pro­cur­ing sup­plies on com­mod­ity ex­changes.

h.

The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity can pro­cure sup­plies at a price sig­ni­fic­antly lower than the cus­tom­ary prices due to a fa­vour­able, tem­por­ary of­fer (par­tic­u­larly in the case of li­quid­a­tion sales).

i.

The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity is award­ing the fol­low-up con­tract to the win­ner of a plan­ning or turn­key con­tract com­pet­i­tion or of a se­lec­tion pro­ced­ure for plan­ning or turn­key con­tract stud­ies; the fol­low­ing con­di­tions must be met:

1.

the pre­ced­ing pro­ced­ure was con­duc­ted in com­pli­ance with the prin­ciples of the law;

2.

the pro­posed solu­tions were as­sessed by an in­de­pend­ent pan­el of ex­perts;

3.

the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity re­served the right in the in­vit­a­tion to tender to award the sub­sequent con­tract in a dir­ect award pro­ced­ure.

³ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may use the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure to award a con­tract as de­scribed in Art­icle 20 para­graph 3 if the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure is of ma­jor sig­ni­fic­ance:

a.

for main­tain­ing do­mest­ic com­pan­ies which are im­port­ant for na­tion­al de­fence; or

b.

for safe­guard­ing Switzer­land's pub­lic in­terests.

⁴ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall pre­pare doc­u­ment­a­tion with the fol­low­ing con­tent on each con­tract awar­ded in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 2 or 3:

a.

the name of the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity and the ten­der­er se­lec­ted;

b.

the type and value of the sup­plies pro­cured;

c.

an ex­plan­a­tion of the cir­cum­stances and con­di­tions jus­ti­fy­ing the use of the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure.

⁵ Pub­lic con­tracts may not be defined with the in­ten­tion that only one spe­cif­ic ten­der­er is con­sidered for the award from the out­set, par­tic­u­larly due to the tech­nic­al or artist­ic fea­tures of the con­tract (para­graph 2 let­ter c) or in the case of re­pla­cing, sup­ple­ment­ing or ex­tend­ing sup­plies already provided (para­graph 2 let­ter e).

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity that or­gan­ises a design con­test or a com­pet­i­tion to con­duct stud­ies in­clud­ing ex­e­cu­tion or awards study con­tracts shall reg­u­late the pro­ced­ure on a case-by-case basis in com­pli­ance with the prin­ciples of this Act. It may refer to the rel­ev­ant pro­vi­sions of trade as­so­ci­ations.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine:

a.

the types of design con­test and the terms of study con­tracts;

b.

the types of pro­ced­ure to be ap­plied;

c.

the re­quire­ments in terms of pre­par­at­ory work;

d.

the ar­range­ments for the pre­lim­in­ary tech­nic­al ex­am­in­a­tion of the com­pet­i­tion entries pri­or to their eval­u­ation by the pan­el of ex­perts;

e.

the spe­cif­ic terms for study con­tracts and design con­test for the pro­cure­ment of in­form­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­logy sup­plies;

f.

the make-up of the pan­el of ex­perts and the re­quire­ments con­cern­ing the in­de­pend­ence of its mem­bers;

g.

the tasks of the pan­el of ex­perts;

h.

the con­di­tions un­der which the pan­el of ex­perts may de­cide on pur­chases;

i.

the con­di­tions un­der which the pan­el of ex­perts may rank com­pet­i­tion entries that de­vi­ate from the pro­vi­sions of the design con­test pro­gramme;

j.

the man­ner in which prizes may be awar­ded and the claims that the win­ners may make de­pend­ing on the type of design con­test;

k.

the com­pens­a­tion for the cre­at­ors of award-win­ning com­pet­i­tion entries in cases where the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity does not fol­low the re­com­mend­a­tion of the pan­el of ex­perts.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may hold an elec­tron­ic auc­tion for the pro­cure­ment of stand­ard­ised goods, work or ser­vices with­in the frame­work of a pro­ced­ure un­der this Act. In this case, the tenders are re­vised after an ini­tial full eval­u­ation and re-ranked us­ing elec­tron­ic aids and, if ne­ces­sary, mul­tiple rounds. Ref­er­ence must be made to this in the in­vit­a­tion to tender.

² The elec­tron­ic auc­tion cov­ers the fol­low­ing areas:

a.

prices where the con­tract is to be awar­ded to the ten­der­er with the low­est total price; or

b.

prices and val­ues for quan­ti­fi­able com­pon­ents such as weight, pur­ity or qual­ity where the con­tract is to be awar­ded to the most ad­vant­age­ous tender.

³ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity checks wheth­er the ten­der­ers meet the eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia and wheth­er the tenders ful­fil the tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions. It car­ries out an ini­tial eval­u­ation of the tenders based on the award cri­ter­ia and the weight­ing es­tab­lished for this pur­pose. Be­fore the auc­tion be­gins, it provides each ten­der­er with the fol­low­ing:

a.

the auto­mat­ic eval­u­ation meth­od, in­clud­ing the math­em­at­ic­al for­mula based on the award cri­ter­ia spe­cified;

b.

the res­ult of the ini­tial eval­u­ation of its tender; and

c.

all oth­er rel­ev­ant in­form­a­tion re­gard­ing the auc­tion pro­cess.

⁴ All eli­gible ten­der­ers are sim­ul­tan­eously in­vited elec­tron­ic­ally to sub­mit new or amended tenders. The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may lim­it the num­ber of eli­gible ten­der­ers, provided it an­nounced this in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion.

⁵ The elec­tron­ic auc­tion may com­prise sev­er­al suc­cess­ive rounds. The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity in­forms all ten­der­ers of their rank in each round.

¹ In the case of com­plex con­tracts, in­tel­lec­tu­al ser­vices or the pro­cure­ment of in­nov­at­ive goods, work or ser­vices, a con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may, with­in the frame­work of an open or se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure, con­duct a dia­logue with the aim of spe­cify­ing the sub­ject of the sup­ply and identi­fy­ing and de­fin­ing the solu­tions or pro­ced­ures. Ref­er­ence must be made to the dia­logue in the in­vit­a­tion to tender.

² The dia­logue may not be con­duc­ted for the pur­pose of ne­go­ti­at­ing prices or total prices.

³ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity for­mu­lates and ex­plains its needs and re­quire­ments in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion. It also dis­closes the fol­low­ing:

a.

the dia­logue pro­cess;

b.

the pos­sible con­tent of the dia­logue;

c.

wheth­er and how ten­der­ers will be com­pensated for their par­ti­cip­a­tion in the dia­logue and the use of their in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty rights, know­ledge and ex­per­i­ence;

d.

the time­frames and ar­range­ments for sub­mit­ting the fi­nal tender.

⁴ It may re­duce the num­ber of par­ti­cip­at­ing ten­der­ers by us­ing ob­ject­ive and trans­par­ent cri­ter­ia.

⁵ It doc­u­ments the pro­cess and con­tent of the dia­logue in an ap­pro­pri­ate and com­pre­hens­ible man­ner.

⁶ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may reg­u­late the dia­logue ar­range­ments in more de­tail.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may is­sue an in­vit­a­tion to tender to­wards agree­ments with one or more ten­der­ers with the aim of de­term­in­ing the terms for the goods, work and ser­vices to be pro­cured over a giv­en peri­od, in par­tic­u­lar with re­gard to their price and, where ap­pro­pri­ate, the quant­it­ies en­vis­aged. The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may con­clude in­di­vidu­al con­tracts based on such a frame­work agree­ment dur­ing its term.

² Frame­work agree­ments may not be used with the in­ten­tion or ef­fect of im­ped­ing or elim­in­at­ing com­pet­i­tion.

³ The term of a frame­work agree­ment may not ex­ceed 5 years. An auto­mat­ic ex­ten­sion is not pos­sible. A longer term may be en­vis­aged in jus­ti­fied cases.

⁴ If a frame­work agree­ment is con­cluded with only one ten­der­er, the in­di­vidu­al con­tracts based on this frame­work agree­ment are con­cluded in ac­cord­ance with the terms of the frame­work agree­ment. For the con­clu­sion of the in­di­vidu­al con­tracts, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may ask the re­spect­ive con­tract­ing party in writ­ing to com­plete its tender.

⁵ If frame­work agree­ments are con­cluded with sev­er­al ten­der­ers for suf­fi­cient reas­ons, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may choose to con­clude in­di­vidu­al con­tracts either in ac­cord­ance with the terms of the re­spect­ive frame­work agree­ment without a new call for tenders or in ac­cord­ance with the fol­low­ing pro­ced­ure:

a.

Be­fore con­clud­ing each in­di­vidu­al con­tract, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity con­sults the con­tract­ing parties in writ­ing and in­forms them of the spe­cif­ic needs.

b.

The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity sets the con­tract­ing parties a reas­on­able dead­line for sub­mit­ting tenders for each in­di­vidu­al con­tract.

c.

The tenders must be sub­mit­ted in writ­ing and are bind­ing for the peri­od spe­cified in the re­quest.

d.

The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity con­cludes the in­di­vidu­al con­tract with the con­tract­ing party that sub­mits the best tender based on the cri­ter­ia defined in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion or frame­work agree­ment.

¹ Dur­ing the award pro­ced­ure and the ex­e­cu­tion of the con­tract to sup­ply the goods, work or ser­vices, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall en­sure that the ten­der­er and its sub­con­tract­ors ful­fil the par­ti­cip­a­tion con­di­tions, par­tic­u­larly the re­quire­ments set out in Art­icle 12, have paid the taxes and so­cial se­cur­ity con­tri­bu­tions due and re­frain from en­ter­ing in­to any un­law­ful agree­ments af­fect­ing com­pet­i­tion.

² It may re­quire the ten­der­er to provide evid­ence of com­pli­ance with the par­ti­cip­a­tion con­di­tions, spe­cific­ally by means of a self-de­clar­a­tion or in­clu­sion on a list.

³ It states what evid­ence must be sub­mit­ted and when in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall set out the ten­der­er eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia in full in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion. The cri­ter­ia must be ob­ject­ively ne­ces­sary and veri­fi­able for the pro­cure­ment pro­ject.

² The eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia may re­late in par­tic­u­lar to the ten­der­er's pro­fes­sion­al, fin­an­cial, eco­nom­ic, tech­nic­al and or­gan­isa­tion­al ca­pa­city, as well as to its ex­per­i­ence.

³ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall spe­cify what evid­ence must be sub­mit­ted and when in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion.

⁴ It may not im­pose the con­di­tion that the ten­der­er has already re­ceived one or more pub­lic con­tracts from a con­tract­ing au­thor­ity sub­ject to this Act.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may keep a list of ten­der­ers that meet the re­quire­ments for re­ceiv­ing pub­lic con­tracts by vir­tue of their eli­gib­il­ity.

² The fol­low­ing in­form­a­tion must be pub­lished on the in­ter­net plat­form of the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons:

a.

the source of the list;

b.

in­form­a­tion on the cri­ter­ia to be met;

c.

veri­fic­a­tion meth­ods and con­di­tions for in­clu­sion on the list;

d.

peri­od of valid­ity and pro­ced­ure for re­new­ing in­clu­sion on the list.

³ A trans­par­ent pro­ced­ure must en­sure that it is pos­sible at any time to re­quest in­clu­sion, to ex­am­ine or veri­fy eli­gib­il­ity, and to place a ten­der­er on the list or de­lete it from it.

⁴ Ten­der­ers that are not in­cluded on a list are also per­mit­ted to par­ti­cip­ate in a spe­cif­ic pro­cure­ment pro­ject if they provide proof of their eli­gib­il­ity.

⁵ If the list is de­leted, the ten­der­ers lis­ted shall be in­formed.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity eval­u­ates the tenders us­ing per­form­ance-re­lated award cri­ter­ia. In com­pli­ance with Switzer­land's in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions, it shall in par­tic­u­lar take in­to ac­count, be­sides the price and qual­ity, cri­ter­ia such as ap­pro­pri­ate­ness, time­frames, tech­nic­al value, eco­nom­ic ef­fi­ciency, life cycle costs, aes­thet­ics, sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, plaus­ib­il­ity of the tender, the dif­fer­ent price levels in the coun­tries where the sup­ply is provided, re­li­ab­il­ity of the price, cre­ativ­ity, cus­tom­er ser­vice, de­liv­ery con­di­tions, in­fra­struc­ture, in­nov­a­tion con­tent, func­tion­al­ity, ser­vice read­i­ness, ex­pert­ise or ef­fi­ciency of the meth­od­o­logy.

² Out­side the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may ad­di­tion­ally take in­to ac­count the ex­tent to which the ten­der­er provides ap­pren­tice­ships places, jobs for older em­ploy­ees or jobs to re­in­teg­rate long-term un­em­ployed people.

³ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall in­dic­ate the award cri­ter­ia and their weight­ing in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion. The weight­ing may be omit­ted if the pro­cure­ment con­cerns solu­tions, pos­sible solu­tions or pro­ced­ures.

⁴ For stand­ard­ised ser­vices, the award may be made ex­clus­ively based on the low­est total price cri­terion, provided that the tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions for the goods, work or ser­vices guar­an­tee high sus­tain­ab­il­ity stand­ards in so­cial, en­vir­on­ment­al and eco­nom­ic terms.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall set out the re­quired tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion. These de­scribe the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of what is to be pro­cured, such as func­tion, per­form­ance, qual­ity, safety, se­cur­ity, di­men­sions and pro­duc­tion pro­cesses, and reg­u­late the la­belling and pack­aging re­quire­ments.

² When set­ting out the tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall rely as far as pos­sible and ap­pro­pri­ate on in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards, or fail­ing that on tech­nic­al reg­u­la­tions used in Switzer­land, re­cog­nised na­tion­al stand­ards or in­dustry re­com­mend­a­tions.

³ Cer­tain com­pan­ies or trade­marks, pat­ents, copy­rights, designs or types, and ref­er­ences to a spe­cif­ic ori­gin or to spe­cif­ic pro­du­cers are not per­mit­ted as tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions, un­less there is no oth­er suf­fi­ciently pre­cise or com­pre­hens­ible way of de­scrib­ing the goods, work or ser­vices and the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity in­cludes the words "or equi­val­ent" in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion. Equi­val­ence has to be proven by the ten­der­er.

⁴ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may stip­u­late tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions for the con­ser­va­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources or the pro­tec­tion of the en­vir­on­ment.

¹ Bid­ding con­sor­tia and sub­con­tract­ors are per­mit­ted, provided the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity does not ex­clude or re­strict this pos­sib­il­ity in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion.

² Mul­tiple tenders by sub­con­tract­ors or mul­tiple ten­der­ers in the con­text of con­sor­tia are pos­sible only if they are ex­pressly per­mit­ted in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion.

³ The char­ac­ter­ist­ic sup­ply gen­er­ally has to be provided by the ten­der­er.

¹ The ten­der­er has to sub­mit a com­plete tender for what is to be pro­cured.

² The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may di­vide the pro­cure­ment item in­to lots and award them to one or more ten­der­ers.

³ If the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity has formed lots, ten­der­ers may sub­mit a tender for sev­er­al lots, un­less the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity has provided oth­er­wise in the in­vit­a­tion to tender. It may stip­u­late that a single ten­der­er may re­ceive only a lim­ited num­ber of lots.

⁴ If the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity re­serves the right to re­quire ten­der­ers to co­oper­ate with third parties, it an­nounces this in the in­vit­a­tion to tender.

⁵ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may re­serve the right to award con­tracts for par­tial sup­plies in the in­vit­a­tion to tender.

¹ Ten­der­ers are free to pro­pose vari­ants in ad­di­tion to the goods, work or ser­vices de­scribed in the in­vit­a­tion to tender. The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may lim­it or ex­clude this pos­sib­il­ity in the in­vit­a­tion to tender.

² A vari­ant is any tender that al­lows the aim of the pro­cure­ment to be achieved in a way that is dif­fer­ent from that en­vis­aged by the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity.

¹ Tenders and re­quests to par­ti­cip­ate must be sub­mit­ted in writ­ing, in full and by the dead­line as spe­cified in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion.

² They may be sub­mit­ted elec­tron­ic­ally if this is provided for in the in­vit­a­tion to tender or tender doc­u­ment­a­tion and the re­quire­ments defined by the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity are com­plied with.

The pub­lic­a­tion of an in­vit­a­tion to tender con­tains at least the fol­low­ing in­form­a­tion:

a.

name and ad­dress of the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity;

b.

type of con­tract and pro­ced­ure and the rel­ev­ant CPV¹² clas­si­fic­a­tion, as well as the rel­ev­ant CPC¹³ clas­si­fic­a­tion in the case of ser­vices;

c.

de­scrip­tion of the goods, work or ser­vices, in­clud­ing the type and quant­ity, or, if the quant­ity is un­known, an es­tim­ate there­of, and any op­tions;

d.

place and time of per­form­ance;

e.

if ap­plic­able, a di­vi­sion in­to lots, re­stric­tion on the num­ber of lots and ad­mis­sion of par­tial tenders;

f.

if ap­plic­able, a re­stric­tion on or ex­clu­sion of bid­ding con­sor­tia and sub­con­tract­ors;

g.

if ap­plic­able, a re­stric­tion on or ex­clu­sion of vari­ants;

h.

in the case of con­tracts for goods, work or ser­vices re­quired on a re­cur­ring basis, an in­dic­a­tion of the date of the sub­sequent in­vit­a­tion to tender if pos­sible and, if ap­pro­pri­ate, an in­dic­a­tion that the time­frame for sub­mit­ting tenders will be shortened;

i.

where ap­pro­pri­ate, an in­dic­a­tion that an elec­tron­ic auc­tion will be held;

j.

where ap­pro­pri­ate, an in­dic­a­tion of the in­ten­tion to con­duct a dia­logue;

k.

the dead­line for sub­mit­ting tenders or re­quests to par­ti­cip­ate;

l.

form­al re­quire­ments for the sub­mis­sion of tenders or re­quests to par­ti­cip­ate, in par­tic­u­lar, an in­dic­a­tion that the sup­ply and price tenders may need to be in two sep­ar­ate en­vel­opes;

m.

lan­guage(s) of the pro­ced­ure and tender;

n.

the eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia and the evid­ence re­quired;

o.

in the case of a se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure, the max­im­um num­ber of ten­der­ers in­vited to sub­mit tenders, if ap­plic­able;

p.

the award cri­ter­ia and their weight­ing, if this in­form­a­tion is not provided in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion;

q.

where ap­pro­pri­ate, the re­ser­va­tion of the right to award con­tracts for par­tial sup­plies;

r.

the peri­od of valid­ity of tenders;

s.

an in­dic­a­tion of where the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion can be ob­tained and, if ap­plic­able, a fee to cov­er costs;

t.

an in­dic­a­tion as to wheth­er the pro­cure­ment falls with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies;

u.

where ap­pro­pri­ate, already in­volved ten­der­ers per­mit­ted to take part in the pro­ced­ure;

v.

where ap­pro­pri­ate, in­struc­tions on leg­al rem­ed­ies.

Where this in­form­a­tion is not already con­tained in the in­vit­a­tion to tender, the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion provides the fol­low­ing in­form­a­tion:

a.

name and ad­dress of the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity;

b.

the sub­ject of the pro­cure­ment, in­clud­ing tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions and cer­ti­fic­ates of con­form­ity, plans, draw­ings and ne­ces­sary in­struc­tions, as well as in­form­a­tion on the quant­ity needed;

c.

form­al re­quire­ments and par­ti­cip­a­tion con­di­tions for the ten­der­ers, in­clud­ing a list of data and doc­u­ments that the ten­der­ers must sub­mit in con­nec­tion with the par­ti­cip­a­tion con­di­tions, as well as any weight­ing of the eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia;

d.

the award cri­ter­ia and their weight­ing;

e.

if the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity pro­cesses the pro­cure­ment elec­tron­ic­ally: any au­then­tic­a­tion and en­cryp­tion re­quire­ments for the elec­tron­ic sub­mis­sion of in­form­a­tion;

f.

if the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity en­vis­ages an elec­tron­ic auc­tion: the rules for con­duct­ing the auc­tion, in­clud­ing the in­dic­a­tion of those tender com­pon­ents which may be ad­ap­ted and which will be eval­u­ated based on the award cri­ter­ia;

g.

the date, time and place for tender open­ing if the tenders are opened pub­licly;

h.

all oth­er terms and con­di­tions ne­ces­sary for the pre­par­a­tion of tenders, par­tic­u­larly the spe­cific­a­tion of the cur­rency in which the tender is to be sub­mit­ted (usu­ally Swiss francs);

i.

time­frames for the pro­vi­sion of the goods, work or ser­vices.

¹ In the open and se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure, all tenders sub­mit­ted on time are opened by at least two rep­res­ent­at­ives of the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity.

² Minutes of the tender open­ing are pre­pared. These must con­tain at least the names of the people present, the names of the ten­der­ers, the date of their tender sub­mis­sion, any tender vari­ants and the total price of each tender.

³ If the sup­ply and price tenders must be sub­mit­ted in two sep­ar­ate en­vel­opes, the en­vel­opes must be opened in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 1 and 2, but only the total prices must be re­cor­ded in the minutes re­gard­ing the open­ing of the second en­vel­ope.

⁴ At the latest after the con­tract has been awar­ded, all ten­der­ers are gran­ted ac­cess to the minutes upon re­quest.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity veri­fies the tenders re­ceived for com­pli­ance with the form­al re­quire­ments. It cor­rects any ob­vi­ous cal­cu­la­tion er­rors.

² The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may re­quire ten­der­ers to ex­plain their tenders. It keeps a writ­ten re­cord of the re­quest and the an­swers.

³ If a tender is re­ceived with a total price that ap­pears un­usu­ally low in com­par­is­on with the oth­er tenders, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity must ob­tain ap­pro­pri­ate in­form­a­tion from the ten­der­er as to wheth­er the par­ti­cip­a­tion con­di­tions have been com­plied with and wheth­er the oth­er re­quire­ments of the in­vit­a­tion to tender have been un­der­stood.

⁴ If sup­ply and price tenders must be sub­mit­ted in two sep­ar­ate en­vel­opes, the award­ing of­fice first pre­pares a rank­ing ac­cord­ing to the qual­ity of the tenders. In a second step, it eval­u­ates the total prices.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may work with the ten­der­ers to ad­just the tenders with re­gard to the goods, work or ser­vices and the ar­range­ments for their pro­vi­sion in or­der to de­term­ine the most ad­vant­age­ous tender.

² An ad­just­ment takes place only if:

a.

this is the only way to cla­ri­fy the con­tract or the tenders or to make the tenders ob­ject­ively com­par­able in ac­cord­ance with the award cri­ter­ia; or

b.

sup­ply changes are ob­ject­ively and ma­ter­i­ally ne­ces­sary, whereby what is to be sup­plied, the cri­ter­ia and the spe­cific­a­tions may not be ad­ap­ted in such a way that the char­ac­ter­ist­ic sup­ply or the po­ten­tial group of ten­der­ers changes as a res­ult.

³ A call for price ad­just­ments is per­mit­ted only in con­nec­tion with the cir­cum­stances de­scribed in para­graph 2.

⁴ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity logs the res­ults of the ad­just­ment.

¹ Provided that the eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia and tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions are met, the tenders are ex­amined and eval­u­ated ob­ject­ively, uni­formly and com­pre­hens­ibly in ac­cord­ance with the award cri­ter­ia. The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity doc­u­ments the eval­u­ation.

² If the com­pre­hens­ive ex­am­in­a­tion and eval­u­ation of tenders re­quires con­sid­er­able time and ef­fort, and provided that the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity an­nounced this in the in­vit­a­tion to tender, it may sub­ject all tenders to an ini­tial ex­am­in­a­tion and rank them based on the doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted. Where pos­sible, it se­lects the three best-ranked tenders on that basis and sub­jects them to a com­pre­hens­ive ex­am­in­a­tion and eval­u­ation.

The con­tract is awar­ded to the most ad­vant­age­ous tender.

¹ In the case of con­tracts out­side the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies, a con­tract may be con­cluded with the se­lec­ted ten­der­er after the award has been made.

² In the case of con­tracts with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies, a con­tract may be con­cluded with the se­lec­ted ten­der­er after ex­piry of the dead­line for ap­peal­ing against the award, un­less the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court has gran­ted sus­pens­ive ef­fect to an ap­peal against the award.

³ If, in the case of con­tracts with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies, an ap­peal pro­ced­ure against the award is pending without sus­pens­ive ef­fect hav­ing been re­ques­ted or gran­ted, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall no­ti­fy the court im­me­di­ately of the con­clu­sion of the con­tract.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may aban­don the award pro­ced­ure, par­tic­u­larly if:

a.

it de­cides not to award the pub­lic con­tract for val­id reas­ons;

b.

no tender meets the tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions or the oth­er re­quire­ments;

c.

more ad­vant­age­ous tenders are to be ex­pec­ted due to changes in the frame­work con­di­tions;

d.

the tenders sub­mit­ted do not al­low for eco­nom­ic­al pro­cure­ment, or sig­ni­fic­antly ex­ceed the cost frame­work;

e.

there are suf­fi­cient in­dic­a­tions of an un­law­ful agree­ment af­fect­ing com­pet­i­tion between the ten­der­ers;

f.

a sig­ni­fic­ant change in the goods, work or ser­vices re­ques­ted be­comes ne­ces­sary.

² Ten­der­ers are not en­titled to com­pens­a­tion in the event of a jus­ti­fied aban­don­ment of the pro­ced­ure.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may ex­clude a ten­der­er from an award pro­ced­ure, de­lete it from a list or re­voke a con­tract it has already been awar­ded if it is found that the ten­der­er con­cerned, one of its gov­ern­ing bod­ies, a third party called upon or one of such a party's gov­ern­ing bod­ies:

a.

does not ful­fil or no longer ful­fils the con­di­tions for par­ti­cip­a­tion in the pro­ced­ure, or its be­ha­viour jeop­ard­ises the leg­ally com­pli­ant con­duct of the award pro­ced­ure;

b.

sub­mit­ted a tender or re­quest to par­ti­cip­ate that con­tains sub­stan­tial form­al er­rors or de­vi­ates sub­stan­tially from the bind­ing re­quire­ments of an in­vit­a­tion to tender;

c.

has been found guilty by a leg­ally en­force­able judg­ment of a mis­de­mean­our to the det­ri­ment of the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity or of a felony.

d.

is sub­ject to at­tach­ment or bank­ruptcy pro­ceed­ings;

e.

has vi­ol­ated anti-cor­rup­tion pro­vi­sions;

f.

re­fuses to al­low in­spec­tions that have been ordered;

g.

has failed to pay taxes or so­cial se­cur­ity con­tri­bu­tions that are due;

h.

has failed to ex­ecute pre­vi­ous pub­lic con­tracts cor­rectly or oth­er­wise demon­strated that it is not a re­li­able and trust­worthy part­ner;

i.

was in­volved in the pre­par­a­tion of the pro­cure­ment and the res­ult­ing com­pet­it­ive dis­ad­vant­age for the oth­er ten­der­ers can­not be off­set by ap­pro­pri­ate means;

j.

has been leg­ally ex­cluded from fu­ture pub­lic con­tracts un­der Art­icle 45 para­graph 1.

² The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may also take meas­ures in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 if there are suf­fi­cient in­dic­a­tions that the ten­der­er, one of its gov­ern­ing bod­ies, a third party called upon or one of such a party's gov­ern­ing bod­ies:

a.

gave the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity un­true or mis­lead­ing state­ments and in­form­a­tion;

b.

entered in­to un­law­ful agree­ments af­fect­ing com­pet­i­tion;

c.

sub­mit­ted an ab­nor­mally low tender without prov­ing com­pli­ance with the par­ti­cip­a­tion con­di­tions upon re­quest and of­fers no guar­an­tee that the goods, work or ser­vices put out to tender will be provided in ac­cord­ance with the con­tract;

d.

in­fringed re­cog­nised pro­fes­sion­al rules or com­prom­ised their pro­fes­sion­al hon­our or in­teg­rity through its acts or omis­sions;

e.

is in­solv­ent;

f.

dis­reg­ard work­place health and safety reg­u­la­tions, terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment, the pro­vi­sions on the equal treat­ment of men and wo­men in terms of equal pay, the pro­vi­sions on con­fid­en­ti­al­ity and the pro­vi­sions of Swiss en­vir­on­ment­al law or the in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions for the pro­tec­tion of the en­vir­on­ment des­ig­nated by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil;

g.

vi­ol­ated re­port­ing or au­thor­isa­tion ob­lig­a­tions un­der the IEA¹⁴;

h.

vi­ol­ated the Fed­er­al Act of 19 Decem­ber 1986¹⁵ on Un­fair Com­pet­i­tion.

¹ If a ten­der­er or sub­con­tract­or which, either it­self or through its gov­ern­ing bod­ies, ful­fils to a ser­i­ous ex­tent one or more of the cri­ter­ia re­ferred to in Art­icle 44 para­graph 1 let­ters c and e and para­graph 2 let­ters b, f and g, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity or the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity by vir­tue of the law or­der may ex­clude it from fu­ture pub­lic con­tracts for a peri­od of up to 5 years. A warn­ing may be is­sued in minor cases. In the case of cor­rup­tion (Art. 44 para. 1 lit. e), the ten­der­er is ex­cluded from con­tracts awar­ded by all fed­er­al con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies; in the oth­er cases, the ten­der­er is ex­cluded from con­tracts awar­ded by the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity con­cerned only.

² The pos­sible sanc­tions ap­ply ir­re­spect­ive of wheth­er any fur­ther leg­al ac­tion is taken against the ten­der­er or sub­con­tract­or con­cerned or its gov­ern­ing bod­ies. The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall no­ti­fy the Com­pet­i­tion Com­mis­sion of any sus­pi­cion of un­law­ful agree­ments af­fect­ing com­pet­i­tion (Art. 44 para. 2 lit. b).

³ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity or the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity by vir­tue of the law shall no­ti­fy an of­fice des­ig­nated by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil of a leg­ally bind­ing ex­clu­sion in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1. This of­fice shall keep a non-pub­lic list of sanc­tioned ten­der­ers and sub­con­tract­ors, which re­cords the reas­ons for the ex­clu­sion and the dur­a­tion of the ex­clu­sion from pub­lic con­tracts. The of­fice shall en­sure that each con­tract­ing au­thor­ity can ob­tain the rel­ev­ant in­form­a­tion in re­la­tion to a par­tic­u­lar ten­der­er or sub­con­tract­or. It may es­tab­lish a re­triev­al pro­ced­ure for this pur­pose. The Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons shall al­low mu­tu­al ac­cess to all in­form­a­tion col­lec­ted in ac­cord­ance with this art­icle. The entry is de­leted from the list once the sanc­tion has ex­pired.

¹ When set­ting the dead­lines for sub­mit­ting tenders or re­quests to par­ti­cip­ate, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall take ac­count of the com­plex­ity of the con­tract, the prob­able num­ber of sub­con­tracts and the mode of trans­mis­sion.

² The fol­low­ing min­im­um dead­lines ap­ply with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies:

a.

in an open pro­ced­ure: 40 days from pub­lic­a­tion of the in­vit­a­tion to tender for the sub­mis­sion of tenders;

b.

in a se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure: 25 days from pub­lic­a­tion of the in­vit­a­tion to tender for the sub­mis­sion of re­quests to par­ti­cip­ate and 40 days from the in­vit­a­tion to pre­pare tenders for the sub­mis­sion of tenders.

³ Any ex­ten­sion of these dead­lines must be pub­lished or no­ti­fied to all ten­der­ers in good time.

⁴ Out­side the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies, the dead­line for sub­mit­ting tenders is gen­er­ally at least 20 days. In the case of largely stand­ard­ised goods, work and ser­vices, the dead­line may be re­duced to no short­er than 5 days.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may re­duce the min­im­um dead­lines set out in Art­icle 46 para­graph 2 to no short­er than 10 days in cases of proven ur­gency.

² It may re­duce the min­im­um 40-day dead­line for sub­mit­ting tenders un­der Art­icle 46 para­graph 2 by 5 days if:

a.

the in­vit­a­tion to tender is pub­lished elec­tron­ic­ally;

b.

the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion is sim­ul­tan­eously pub­lished elec­tron­ic­ally;

c.

tenders are re­ceived elec­tron­ic­ally.

³ It may re­duce the min­im­um 40-day peri­od for sub­mit­ting tenders un­der Art­icle 46 para­graph 2 to no short­er than 10 days, provided it has pub­lished a pri­or no­tice with the fol­low­ing con­tent at least 40 days and no more than 12 months be­fore pub­lic­a­tion of the in­vit­a­tion to tender:

a.

sub­ject of the in­ten­ded pro­cure­ment;

b.

ap­prox­im­ate time­frame for sub­mit­ting tenders or re­quests to par­ti­cip­ate;

c.

the fact that in­ter­ested ten­der­ers should in­form the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity of their in­terest in the pro­cure­ment;

d.

where the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion can be ob­tained;

e.

all oth­er in­form­a­tion un­der Art­icle 35 that is already avail­able at that time.

⁴ It may re­duce the min­im­um 40-day peri­od for sub­mit­ting tenders un­der Art­icle 46 para­graph 2 to no short­er than 10 days if it is pro­cur­ing goods, work or ser­vices re­quired on a re­cur­ring basis and giv­en no­tice of the short­en­ing of the peri­od in an earli­er in­vit­a­tion to tender.

⁵ Fur­ther­more, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may in any event re­duce the dead­line for sub­mit­ting tenders to no short­er than 13 days when pur­chas­ing com­mer­cial goods, work or ser­vices or a com­bin­a­tion of the two, provided it elec­tron­ic­ally pub­lishes the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion to­geth­er with the in­vit­a­tion to tender. If the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity ac­cepts tenders for com­mer­cial goods, work or ser­vices elec­tron­ic­ally, it may also re­duce the dead­line to no short­er than 10 days.

¹ In the open and se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure, the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity pub­lishes the pri­or no­tice, the in­vit­a­tion to tender, the award and the aban­don­ment of the pro­ced­ure on an in­ter­net plat­form for pub­lic pro­cure­ment op­er­ated jointly by the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons. It also pub­lishes awards that were made us­ing the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure for con­tracts above the ap­plic­able threshold for the open or se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure. This does not ap­ply to con­tracts awar­ded us­ing the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure in ac­cord­ance with An­nex 5 sec­tion 1 let­ters c and d.

² The tender doc­u­ment­a­tion is gen­er­ally made avail­able at the same time and elec­tron­ic­ally. Ac­cess to these pub­lic­a­tions is free of charge.

³ The or­gan­isa­tion com­mis­sioned by the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons to de­vel­op and op­er­ate the in­ter­net plat­form may im­pose fees or charges for the con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies, ten­der­ers and oth­er parties that use the plat­form or as­so­ci­ated ser­vices. These are based on the num­ber of pub­lic­a­tions or the scope of the ser­vices used.

⁴ In the case of con­tracts with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies that are not pub­lished in an of­fi­cial lan­guage of the World Trade Or­gan­iz­a­tion (WTO), the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall pub­lish a sum­mary of the no­tice in an of­fi­cial lan­guage of the WTO at the same time as the in­vit­a­tion to tender. The sum­mary must con­tain at least the fol­low­ing:

a.

sub­ject of the pro­cure­ment;

b.

time­frame for sub­mit­ting tenders or re­quests to par­ti­cip­ate;

c.

where the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion can be ob­tained.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late any ad­di­tion­al re­quire­ments con­cern­ing the lan­guages of pub­lic­a­tions, the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion, sub­mis­sions by ten­der­ers and the pro­ced­ure. It may take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­count of Switzer­land's pluri­lin­gual­ism. It may modi­fy the re­quire­ments ac­cord­ing to sup­ply types. The fol­low­ing prin­ciples ap­ply, sub­ject to ex­cep­tions ex­pressly spe­cified by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil:

a.

In the case of con­struc­tion con­tracts and as­so­ci­ated sup­plies of goods and ser­vices, in­vit­a­tions to tender and awards must be pub­lished in at least two of­fi­cial lan­guages, par­tic­u­larly in the of­fi­cial lan­guage at the con­struc­tion loc­a­tion.

b.

In the case of sup­ply and ser­vice con­tracts, in­vit­a­tions to tender and awards must be pub­lished in at least two of­fi­cial lan­guages.

c.

Any of­fi­cial lan­guage may be used for sub­mis­sions by ten­der­ers.

⁶ Con­tracts awar­ded with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies gen­er­ally have to be pub­lished with­in 30 days. The no­ti­fic­a­tion must con­tain the fol­low­ing in­form­a­tion:

a.

type of pro­ced­ure used;

b.

sub­ject and scope of the con­tract;

c.

name and ad­dress of the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity;

d.

date of the award;

e.

name and ad­dress of the ten­der­er se­lec­ted;

f.

total price of the tender se­lec­ted or, in ex­cep­tion­al cases, the low­est and highest total prices of the tenders in­cluded in the award pro­ced­ure, in­clud­ing VAT.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies shall re­tain the rel­ev­ant doc­u­ments con­cern­ing an award pro­ced­ure for at least 3 years from the date of the leg­ally bind­ing award.

² The doc­u­ments to be re­tained in­clude:

a.

the in­vit­a­tion to tender;

b.

the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion;

c.

the minutes of the tender open­ing;

d.

the cor­res­pond­ence con­cern­ing the award pro­ced­ure;

e.

the ad­just­ment logs;

f.

de­cisions with­in the frame­work of the award pro­ced­ure;

g.

the tender se­lec­ted;

h.

data to al­low the trace­ab­il­ity of the elec­tron­ic pro­cessing of a pro­cure­ment;

i.

doc­u­ment­a­tion on pub­lic con­tracts with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies awar­ded us­ing the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure.

¹ With­in twelve months of the end of each cal­en­dar year, the con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies shall com­pile elec­tron­ic stat­ist­ics on the pre­vi­ous year's pro­cure­ment with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies for the State Sec­ret­ari­at for Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs (SECO).

² The stat­ist­ics shall con­tain at least the fol­low­ing in­form­a­tion:

a.

the num­ber and total value of the pub­lic con­tracts awar­ded by each con­tract­ing au­thor­ity, broken down in­to con­struc­tion work, sup­ply and ser­vice con­tracts, in­dic­at­ing the rel­ev­ant CPC or CPV clas­si­fic­a­tion;

b.

the num­ber and total value of the pub­lic con­tracts awar­ded us­ing the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure;

c.

where no data can be provided: es­tim­ates of the data re­ferred to un­der a and b, to­geth­er with an ex­plan­a­tion of the es­tim­a­tion meth­od used.

³ The total value in­dic­ated shall in­clude value ad­ded tax.

⁴ SECO's over­all stat­ist­ics are pub­licly ac­cess­ible, sub­ject to data pro­tec­tion and the pro­tec­tion of com­mer­cial secrecy.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity shall no­ti­fy the ten­der­ers of its de­cisions by pub­lic­a­tion or in­di­vidu­al no­ti­fic­a­tion. The ten­der­ers have no right to be heard be­fore the de­cision is no­ti­fied.

² Ap­peal­able de­cisions must be sum­mar­ily sub­stan­ti­ated and in­clude in­struc­tions on rights of ap­peal.

³ The sum­mary sub­stan­ti­ation for an award shall in­clude:

a.

the type of pro­ced­ure and the name of the suc­cess­ful ten­der­er;

b.

the total price of the suc­cess­ful tender or, by way of ex­cep­tion, the low­est and highest total prices of the tenders sub­mit­ted in the award pro­ced­ure;

c.

the de­cis­ive fea­tures and ad­vant­ages of the suc­cess­ful tender;

d.

where ap­plic­able, the ra­tionale for us­ing the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure.

⁴ The con­tract­ing au­thor­ity may not dis­close any in­form­a­tion if dis­clos­ure would:

a.

vi­ol­ate ap­plic­able law or harm pub­lic in­terests;

b.

pre­ju­dice le­git­im­ate eco­nom­ic in­terests of the ten­der­ers; or

c.

jeop­ard­ise fair com­pet­i­tion between the ten­der­ers.

¹ The con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies' de­cisions may be ap­pealed to the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court:

a.

in the case of sup­plies of goods or ser­vices: when the con­tract value ex­ceeds the ap­plic­able threshold for the in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure;

b.

in the case of con­struc­tion work: when the con­tract value ex­ceeds the ap­plic­able threshold for the open or se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure.

² In the case of con­tracts out­side the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies, the ap­peal may only seek a de­clar­a­tion that a de­cision vi­ol­ates fed­er­al law; this does not ap­ply to ap­peals against de­cisions in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 53 para­graph 1 let­ter i. For­eign ten­der­ers may ap­peal if the state in which they are dom­i­ciled grants re­cip­roc­al rights.

³ The Fed­er­al Su­preme Court has dir­ect jur­is­dic­tion for ap­peals against pro­cure­ments of the Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Su­preme Court shall ap­point an in­tern­al ap­peals com­mit­tee to as­sess ap­peals against Fed­er­al Su­preme Court pro­cure­ments.

⁵ There is no right of ap­peal against the award of the pub­lic con­tracts re­ferred to in An­nex 5 sec­tion 1 let­ters c and d.

¹ Solely the fol­low­ing may be con­tested by ap­peal:

a.

the in­vit­a­tion to tender for the con­tract;

b.

the de­cision on the choice of ten­der­ers in the se­lect­ive pro­ced­ure;

c.

the de­cision to in­clude a ten­der­er on a list or to re­move a ten­der­er from a list;

d.

the de­cision on re­cus­al re­quests;

e.

the award;

f.

the re­voc­a­tion of the award;

g.

the aban­don­ment of the pro­ced­ure;

h.

ex­clu­sion from the pro­ced­ure;

i.

the im­pos­i­tion of a sanc­tion.

² Or­ders in the tender doc­u­ment­a­tion whose sig­ni­fic­ance is ap­par­ent may be chal­lenged only with­in the frame­work of an ap­peal against the in­vit­a­tion to tender.

³ The pro­vi­sions of this Act on the right to be heard in the de­cision-mak­ing pro­ced­ure, on sus­pens­ive ef­fect and on lim­it­ing the grounds for ap­peal do not ap­ply to ap­peals against the im­pos­i­tion of a sanc­tion.

⁴ De­cisions un­der para­graph 1 let­ters c and i may be ap­pealed ir­re­spect­ive of the value of the con­tract.

⁵ There are no fur­ther rights of ap­peal against de­cisions un­der this Act.

⁶ There is no right of ap­peal against the con­clu­sion of in­di­vidu­al con­tracts in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 25 para­graphs 4 and 5.

¹ The ap­peal does not have sus­pens­ive ef­fect.

² The Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court may, upon re­quest, grant sus­pens­ive ef­fect to an ap­peal against a con­tract with­in the scope of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies if the ap­peal ap­pears to be suf­fi­ciently jus­ti­fied and there are no over­rid­ing pub­lic in­terests to the con­trary. As a rule, only an ex­change of cor­res­pond­ence takes place on the is­sue of sus­pens­ive ef­fect.

³ A sus­pens­ive ef­fect re­quest that is an ab­use of law or not made in good faith is not pro­tec­ted. Claims for dam­ages by the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity and the ten­der­er se­lec­ted must be as­sessed by the civil courts.

Un­less oth­er­wise provided for in this Act, the de­cision-mak­ing and ap­peals pro­ced­ure is gov­erned by the pro­vi­sions of the Fed­er­al Act of 20 Decem­ber 1968¹⁶ on Ad­min­is­trat­ive Pro­ced­ure (APA).

¹ Ap­peals must be sub­mit­ted in writ­ing with a state­ment of the grounds with­in 20 days of the de­cision be­ing no­ti­fied.

² The pro­vi­sions of the APA¹⁷ and the Fed­er­al Act of 17 June 2005¹⁸ on the Fed­er­al Su­preme Court on leg­al hol­i­days do not ap­ply to the award pro­ced­ures un­der this Act.

³ The ap­pro­pri­ate­ness of a de­cision can­not be re­viewed in ap­peal pro­ceed­ings.

⁴ Only those that can prove that they can and wish to provide the goods, work or ser­vices re­ques­ted or equi­val­ent goods, work or ser­vices may ap­peal against awards in the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure. An ap­peal may be filed only on the grounds that the dir­ect award pro­ced­ure was wrongly ap­plied or that the con­tract was awar­ded based on cor­rup­tion.

¹ There is no right to in­spect files in the de­cision-mak­ing pro­ced­ure.

² In the ap­peal pro­ced­ure, the com­plain­ant must be gran­ted ac­cess, upon re­quest, to the eval­u­ation of its tender and oth­er pro­ced­ur­al files rel­ev­ant to the de­cision, un­less there are over­rid­ing pub­lic or private in­terests to the con­trary.

¹ The ap­peal body may de­cide on the case it­self or refer it back to the pre­vi­ous in­stance or to the con­tract­ing au­thor­ity. In the event of re­fer­ral, it must is­sue bind­ing in­struc­tions.

² If the ap­peal proves to be jus­ti­fied and the con­tract has already been con­cluded with the ten­der­er se­lec­ted, the ap­peal body shall de­term­ine the ex­tent to which the con­tested de­cision vi­ol­ates the ap­plic­able law.

³ At the same time as es­tab­lish­ing the vi­ol­a­tion, the ap­peal body shall de­cide on any claim for dam­ages.

⁴ Dam­ages are lim­ited to the ne­ces­sary ex­penses in­curred by the ten­der­er in con­nec­tion with pre­par­ing and sub­mit­ting its tender.

¹ The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Com­mis­sion for the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the Can­tons (KBBK) is re­spons­ible for mon­it­or­ing Switzer­land's in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions in the area of pub­lic pro­cure­ment. It com­prises equal num­bers of rep­res­ent­at­ives of the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons. SECO is re­spons­ible for provid­ing the sec­ret­ari­at.

² The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Com­mis­sion per­forms the fol­low­ing tasks in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

pre­par­ing Switzer­land's po­s­i­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies for the at­ten­tion of the Fed­er­al Coun­cil and ad­vising the Swiss ne­go­ti­ation del­eg­a­tions;

b.

pro­mot­ing the ex­change of in­form­a­tion and ex­per­i­ence between the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons, and draw­ing up re­com­mend­a­tions con­cern­ing the im­ple­ment­a­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions in Swiss law;

c.

fos­ter­ing con­tacts with for­eign su­per­vis­ory au­thor­it­ies;

d.

provid­ing ad­vice and me­di­at­ing in in­di­vidu­al cases in the event of dis­putes re­lat­ing to mat­ters re­ferred to un­der let­ters a to c.

³ If there are in­dic­a­tions that Switzer­land's in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions con­cern­ing pub­lic pro­cure­ment are be­ing vi­ol­ated, the KBBK may in­ter­vene with the fed­er­al or can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies and cause them to cla­ri­fy the cir­cum­stances and take the ne­ces­sary meas­ures if ir­reg­u­lar­it­ies are found.

⁴ The KBBK may pre­pare ex­pert re­ports or man­date ex­perts to do so.

⁵ The KBBK drafts its own reg­u­la­tions, which re­quire the ap­prov­al of the Fed­er­al Coun­cil and the In­ter­can­t­on­al Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Body.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil is­sues the im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions. It may del­eg­ate the task of is­su­ing im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions on the stat­ist­ics de­scribed in Art­icle 50 to the fed­er­al of­fice re­spons­ible for pro­cure­ment.

² When is­su­ing the im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions, it shall com­ply with the re­quire­ments of the rel­ev­ant in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies.

³ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may par­ti­cip­ate in the or­gan­isa­tion that op­er­ates the in­ter­net plat­form of the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons for pub­lic pro­cure­ment in Switzer­land.

The re­peal and amend­ment of oth­er le­gis­lat­ive in­stru­ments are covered in An­nex 7.

Award pro­ced­ures ini­ti­ated be­fore the entry in­to force of this Act will be com­pleted un­der ex­ist­ing law.

¹ This Act is sub­ject to an op­tion­al ref­er­en­dum.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil will de­term­ine the com­mence­ment date.

Com­mence­ment date: 1 Janu­ary 2021¹⁹