On 11 November 2024, the representatives of the Republic Commission for the Protection of Rights in Public Procurement Procedures (the Republic Commission) participated in 15th Meeting of the Network of First Instance Review Bodies of the European Union (Network), organized by the European Commission – Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (DG GROW), held in Luxembourg. The introductory speech, given by Catherine Diederich, Minister of Mobility and Public Works of Luxembourg, was followed by an overview of the legal protection system in public procurement in Luxembourg and a presentation of a case study from practice in the Federal Republic of Germany. Thereafter, representative of DG GROW spoke about the latest CJEU case-law in the field of public procurement and legal protection, including pending judgements and Opinions of the Advocate-General. After break, the topic was the award of damages in public procurement with emphasis to the latest examples from case-law practices of the CJEU and the Court of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). In this part of the meeting, the representatives of Slovakia had a presentation concerning award of damages.
During the evening part of the meeting, the representative of DG GROW spoke about the evaluation of EU Directives on public procurement in the light of their potential amendments, and briefly informed the participants on CJEU judgement in case T-101/18 Austria v Commission.
Within the same event, on the next day (12 November), participants visited Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg, and attended the hearing in case C-59/23 P Austria v Commission.
The Network of First Instance Review Bodies of the European Union, as foreseen by the EU Single Market Strategy, has been established in 2017, in response to the EU Evaluation Report (adopted on 24 January 2017) on the effectiveness of the Public Procurement Remedies Directives. The aim of the Network is to encourage cooperation and exchange of information in order to support the efficient functioning of national review bodies in public procurement, including data collection and development of indicators related to the national legal protection systems.
