29/11/2025
Decision on how the European Parliament assessed whether prices offered in two tenders for the provision of translation services were abnormally low (case 2058/2024/VB) | European Ombudsman
An interesting case that gives insights on EU translation services tenders.
"The complainant argued that the Parliament had failed to analyse whether the prices offered by the first two ranked tenderers were abnormally low."
"The first-ranked tenderer, which had tendered a price of EUR 9 per page and received a quality score of 91, scored 127,5 points. The second-ranked tenderer, which had tendered a price of EUR 11,90 per page and received a quality score of 80,2, scored 88,32 points. The complainant, which had tendered a price of EUR 22,08 per page and received a quality score of 86,5, scored 86,63 points."
"On 5 November 2024, the complainant asked the Parliament if it had considered the prices tendered by the first two tenderers as ‘abnormally low’ under the EU Financial Regulation,[5] and whether it had requested clarifications from them on this matter."
"The Parliament’s Directorate-General for Translation, which was the contracting authority in this case, applies a mathematical criterion to detect tenders that appear abnormally low: a tender would appear to be abnormally low when the tendered price is at least 40% lower than the arithmetical mean of all prices tendered per lot. This is allowed under EU law.[13] In this case, the application of this criterion did not indicate that the prices tendered would appear abnormally low.[14]"
"In addition, the tenderers had provided a declaration of each translator stating that they were willing to work with the tenderer if it was awarded the contract. The translators were thus necessarily aware of the conditions under which they would be remunerated, and the Parliament had no reason to question the veracity of the declarations."
" It considered the complainant’s argument about the minimum wage in Poland to be unfounded. The complainant had not defined the reference rate used in its reasoning, nor explained how the price per page would relate to the cost per hour. In any case, the Parliament noted that, when the tenders were assessed, the price of the first two tenderers were higher than the minimum hourly rate for contracts other than employment contracts[17] and of the minimum monthly wage per hour in Poland.[18]"
" Only when the pre-translated parts exceed 81% of the document to be translated is the price reduced under the contract.[20] There might thus be cases in which translators are paid fully even if they have to translate 20% of a document and only proofread the rest."
FIT Europe Πανελλήνια Ένωση Επαγγελματιών Μεταφραστών Πτυχιούχων ΙΠ - Peempip Πανελλήνια Ένωση Mεταφραστών - ΠΕΜ
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