Stockholm municipality faced with procurement fines

The contracts in question involved material alterations to the original framework agreements. These alterations consisted of 1) the municipality making call-offs for the services of construction managers for purely administrative tasks, and 2) paying an hourly compensation rate that was more than twice that specified in the terms of the framework agreement. The municipality moreover deviated from the call-off procedures laid down in the framework agreements.

These changes were of such a nature that in accordance with the procurement rules they should have led to the publication of a new notice of contract. The Swedish Competition Authority therefore finds that the procurement in question was an undue direct award.

The Swedish Competition Authority is now referring the matter to the Administrative Court in Stockholm, with a demand that the municipality be ordered to pay SEK 150 000 in procurement fines.

Stockholm municipality has previously been ordered by a court to pay procurement fines for undue direct awards. This is an aggravating circumstance, and the Swedish Competition Authority’s demand is therefore for a higher fine than would otherwise have been the case.

– Repeated breaches are an aggravating circumstance. One of the purposes of the Swedish Competition Authority’s supervision is to educate and prevent, says the authority’s Director General, Rikard Jermsten.

Read the application, dnr 643/2017 (in Swedish)