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EU Commission Halts Proceedings Led against Slovakia over Thorny Tender
Friday 20 November 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava/Brussels, November 20 (TASR) - The European Commission (EC) has halted proceedings against Slovakia in the case of the so-called notice-board tender because the Construction and Regional Development Ministry has already ended the controversial contract, the European Commission Representation Office in Slovakia told TASR on Friday, adding that investigations involving other bodies continue.
The Construction Ministry last year announced a tender for supplying various legal and advertising services co-financed by the EU Funds based solely on a notice-board located within the ministry's headquarters. The ministry, run by the Slovak National Party (SNS), subsequently signed an agreement with the winning bidder - a consortium that included two companies called Zamedia and Avocat and paid out part of the money for the services. It came to light later that both Zamedia and Avocat are close to SNS chairman Jan Slota and that the consortium's bid was extremely expensive.
"The Commission on the basis of a complaint delivered in February 2009 concluded that the way of publishing (the call) this procurement procedure wasn't acceptable from the perspective of respecting the legal regulations of the (European) Community, the principle of transparency in particular. That's because the access to the relevant information concerning the order in question was restricted in terms of time as well as space," said the head of the press department of the European Commission representation in Slovakia Luba Mihaleje Hromkova.
"When it comes to the proceedings in terms of violation of the legal requirements, the Commission thinks that the specific reasons of the complaint about violating the legal requirements have been removed in a formal way when the contract was withdrawn," said Hronkova in explaining why the proceedings concerning the violation can be halted.
At the same time, she noted that the Commission's decision doesn't influence the investigations being carried out by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), the Slovak police or Slovak judicial bodies in connection with the circumstances of surrounding the warding the contract.
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