Launch 135 procedures at once and you pay the bill 34 times: OTW bears all roll fees plus 34 procedural indemnities after withdrawing the school-transport contracts
Coach Partners Hainaut challenged, through 34 separate extreme-urgency petitions, the decisions of the Walloon transport operator OTW to offer 34 school-transport circuits only to operators on the perimeter list; when OTW renounced the award on 28 April 2022 the dispute lost its object, yet the Council of State still ordered OTW to bear the full 7,548 euros in roll fees and contributions plus 34 procedural indemnities of 154 euros each — 5,236 euros in total — precisely because OTW itself had opted for dozens of parallel procedures instead of a single contract divided into lots.
What happened?
In the spring of 2022 the Opérateur de Transport de Wallonie (OTW) launched no fewer than 135 parallel award procedures for as many school-transport circuits belonging to a single transport network. Relying on the Walloon Government decree of 1 April 1999, it invited only the operators listed for the operating perimeter — without publishing a contract notice or a notice on the existence of a qualification system. Coach Partners Hainaut, which was not invited, filed 34 separate petitions on 14 April 2022, each seeking suspension under extreme urgency and annulment of the approval of the contract documents for circuits 7007 to 7877. An order of 22 April 2022 joined the 34 cases. Barely a week later, on 28 April 2022, OTW renounced the award of the circuits concerned — a decision notified to all bidders by registered letter which, in the absence of any appeal, became definitive. The contested decisions were thereby implicitly withdrawn and the dispute lost its object (article 30, § 5 of the coordinated laws). What remained was the question of costs, fought out sharply at the hearing of 23 November 2022. OTW wanted to bear the costs of just one appeal — at most 200 euros in roll fees and a single procedural indemnity of 140 euros — because the 34 petitions were identical and their joinder predictable. The Council rejected that reasoning. The roll fee and the contribution are due per petition, and no provision creates an exception in the event of joinder: the registry had therefore rightly claimed 7,548 euros, and that burden shifts entirely to OTW as the losing party. Nor could Coach Partners Hainaut be blamed for lodging 34 separate appeals: the rule is precisely that one petition may target only one act, and whoever bundles connected acts into a single petition risks it being admissible only as to its first object. It was OTW itself that chose separate procedures rather than one contract divided into lots. The procedural indemnity was likewise awarded per appeal, albeit — given the identical petitions differing only in circuit number — at the minimum rate indexed since 9 July 2022 to 154 euros: 34 times 154, or 5,236 euros.
Why does this matter?
The judgment answers a question every bidder faces when a contracting authority takes a series of similar decisions: do I file one appeal or as many appeals as there are decisions — and who bears the costs? The Council of State confirms that the safe route, one petition per contested act, is not procedural abuse, even where the connection between the cases is obvious and their joinder predictable. It consistently places the financial consequence on the party that shaped the dispute this way: by launching 135 separate award procedures instead of dividing one contract into lots, OTW exposed itself to as many separate appeals, each carrying a roll fee, a contribution and a procedural indemnity. At the same time the judgment shows the limit: identical, repetitive petitions do justify reducing the procedural indemnity to the minimum. And it confirms a principle that recurs elsewhere in the case law: an authority that withdraws its contested decision counts as the losing party — the withdrawal is a disguised annulment, not a cost-free exit.
The lesson
For bidders: dare to file a separate petition per contested decision when an authority spreads its contract over dozens of parallel procedures. Each petition costs a roll fee and a contribution, but if you win — including through a withdrawal — you recover everything, plus a procedural indemnity per appeal. Do expect the minimum rate when your petitions are copies of one another. For contracting authorities the lesson is sharper: choosing to award a network of 135 circuits not as one contract in lots but as 135 loose procedures is also choosing 135 potential appeals, each with its own price tag. Withdrawing the award afterwards avoids the ruling on the merits but not the bill: here 7,548 euros in roll fees and contributions plus 5,236 euros in procedural indemnities.
Ask yourself
Is your contracting authority spreading a coherent whole over dozens of parallel award procedures, and do you realise you must then in principle file a separate appeal per decision? Do you know that bundling several acts into one petition risks admissibility only as to the first object? As an authority, when choosing between lots and separate procedures, have you considered that each procedure carries its own litigation risk with its own costs? And do you know that withdrawing the contested decisions makes you the losing party, with all the roll fees, contributions and procedural indemnities that entails?
About this database
The Council of State (Raad van State / Conseil d'État) is Belgium's supreme administrative court. In disputes over public procurement — from contract awards to tenderer exclusions — the Council of State is the final arbiter. The rulings in this database are summarised by TenderWolf in plain language, with practical lessons for tenderers and contracting authorities. View all rulings →