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 this Act comes in­to force shall be com­pleted in ac­cord­ance with the pre­vi­ous law.

¹ This Act is sub­ject to an op­tion­al ref­er­en­dum.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the com­mence­ment date.

Com­mence­ment date: 1 Janu­ary 2021¹⁹