Council of State suspensions NMBS for Spanish Caf for new trainsets
© Marc Herremans – Mediahuis
The Council of State suspends the NMBS decision to designate the Spanish cafe as a preferred bidder for the purchase of new train sets. According to the council, the railway company has not been sufficiently transparent in its decision.
At the end of 2022, the NMBS launched a tender for the delivery of hundreds of new MR30 motor sets, train sets where the engine is built in and that should therefore not be drawn by a locomotive. The railway company received three quotations. In addition to that of the Spanish Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocabriles, or CAF, it was about Siemens and Alstom.
At the end of February, the NMBS CAF appointed as a preferred bidder. This was done on the basis of a ranking of quotations based on various criteria, including the technical quality. With the designation as a preferred bidder, the railway company indicated that it wanted to start negotiations with the Spaniards. Siemens and Alstom meanwhile ended up in the waiting room.
But the choice for CAF was bad. Bernard Belvaux, the CEO of the Benelux branch of Alstom, even called the decision « shocking ». The French company employs 3,000 people on his sites in Bruges and Charleroi. According to Belvaux, Alstom’s proposal was more than 100 million euros cheaper than CAF’s, while the global score would have been very light in favor of the Spaniards.
Alstom eventually went to the Council of State with the question of having the decision suspended. The council has now also done that, according to a judgment on Thursday. The railway company is therefore not allowed to start negotiations with CAF for the time being.
Transparency
The decision of the NMBS does not show which method was used to assess the technical quality of the different quotations, says the Judicial College. In this way, society « ignores the principle of transparency » that a government company must observe with the award of public procurement, it sounds in a news item on the website of the council.
The choice for CAF also encountered a lot of resistance in recent weeks. Not only would the NMBS compete with Alstom in Bruges and Charleroi in this way, it sounded to opposition parties PvdA and Groen, there would also be indications that the Spanish company is installing railway lines in occupied Palestinian territory.
Mobility Minister Jean-Luc Crucke (Les Engagés) only wanted to say at the beginning of March that the European rules for public tenders in the file are being followed, and that the contract has not yet been formally awarded to CAF. He also pointed out that the decision was taken unanimously by the NMBS Board of Directors at the end of February. It contains representatives of N-VA, CD&V, Vooruit, Open VLD, Groen, MR, PS and Ecolo.
