23.8.2021

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 338/28

(Case T-376/21)

(2021/C 338/37)

Language of the case: French

Parties

Applicant: Instituto Cervantes (Madrid, Spain) (represented by: E. van Nuffel d’Heynsbroeck, lawyer)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

—declare the action inadmissible;

—annul the decision of the European Commission to award lot 3 (Spanish language) of the contract relating to framework contracts for language training for the institutions, bodies and agencies of the European Union (No HR/2020/OP/0014), in first place to the consortium CLL Centre de Langues-Allingua and in second place to the applicant;

—order the Commission to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicant relies on five pleas in law.

1.First plea in law, alleging a failure to give sufficient reasons in the contested decision with regard to the assessment of the relative merits of the tenders.

2.Second plea in law, alleging failure to compare the relative merits of the tenders.

3.Third plea in law, alleging that the Commission committed a manifest error of assessment by rejecting, without verifying their validity, the parts of the tender which were accessible via a hypertext link incorporated in the tender.

4.Fourth plea in law, raised in the alternative, alleging, first, that there was no link between the assessment of the intrinsic qualities of the applicant's tender and its scoring under sub-criteria 1.1 and 1.2 set out in the contract notice and, second, that there was a breach of the principle of transparency.

5.Fifth plea in law, alleging infringement of the objective of opening up public contracts to competition as widely as possible.