Competition Register: New Tool Now Sharpened

Starting on 1st of June 2022, contracting authorities are obliged to consult the Competition Register to determine whether one of the bidders in a public procurement procedure is listed in the Register. Although the contracting authorities will continue to decide on the outcome, i.e., whether to exclude such bidder or not based on an exclusion ground, listings in the competition register will have a considerable indicative effect.

Thus, if a company has an entry in the Competition Register, it will unlikely be able to participate in public procurement procedures. For this reason, it is now even more important to check whether there is any indication for the existence of exclusion grounds. If a company encounters a particular incident that constitutes an exclusion ground and could cause an entry in the Competition Register, it is advisable to take preventive self-cleaning measures as early as possible. The German Federal Cartel Office, the agency administering the Competition Register, has issued guidelines and notes on this subject, which contain helpful clarifications (in German only). These guidelines and notes give general impression of the scope of the measures to be implemented. We are curious to see how the Competition Register will prove itself in practice. In any case, according to the Federal Cartel Office, the register is technically “sharp” and already contains entries based on lively reporting activities by the public prosecutors’ offices.