The Council of State has ruled that the Belgian rail company NMBS lacked the necessary transparency in the procedure that led to the selection of the Spanish company Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocabriles (CAF) as its “preferred bidder” for a 3.4-billion-euro contract for the purchase of new rolling stock.
The Council of State suspends Belgian rail company’s decision to have hundreds of train carriages built by CAF in Spain
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At the end of February, another candidate for the contract, Alstom Belgium, had lodged a request with the Council of State for its objections to NMBS’ decision to be treated with the upmost urgency. In the ruling that was released on Thursday, the Council of State said that “The method used to evaluate the bids in terms of their technical merit could not be understood” and that it “considers that the method used by NMBS disregards the principle of transparency that a public company is required to respect under the conditions of law on public contracts”.
The Council of State’s ruling means that the Belgian rail company’s decision to designate CAF as its “preferred bidder” has been suspended.
The French-owned company Alstom has a production site at Bruges (West Flanders) and a centre of excellence in Charleroi (Hainaut Province). According to the Christian trade union ACV Metea, nearly 800 jobs could be lost at Alstom's Bruges if NMBS ordered the rolling stock from the Spanish manufacturer CAF rather than Alstrom.