Eligibility for contracts
When awarded contracts, organisations must guarantee compliance with certain fundamental principles and best practices, in accordance with the principles of transparency and fair competition for potential contractors and taking precautions to avoid conflicts of interest.
One of the main step of the award procedure is the verification of the tenderers, by establishing the eligibility criteria. To this end the organisation shall establish clear selection and award criteria and standard rules for the composition of the evaluation committee.
The most important criteria to be respected are about rules of nationality and of origin. The rule of nationality apply for all service, work and supply contracts within grants, while rule of origin apply only to supply contracts.
Experts (service contracts) can however be of any nationality.
Both nationality and origin rules must be complied with when making any purchases of goods or equipment as part of a project co-financed by EuropeAid, even for the goods that are not covered by the EC co-financing in the project’s accounts (EC rules apply to the entire project budget presented, no matter the co-financing level).
Any departure from the rules of nationality and origin set out above is subject to proper justification and formal derogation from the EC.
For audit purposes, the Partner must be able to demonstrate the nationality of its suppliers, contractors and service providers and have proof of the origin (e.g. invoices, certificates of origin, etc.) of all products where a quality assurance is required (e.g. medicines, food and nutritional products, etc.).
Moreover the EC establishes some exclusion criteria to the participation in an award procedure which have to be taken under consideration when preparing a tender procedure.
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