Whoever lost the 12-year IRISnet3 contract gets no second chance in extreme urgency — five grounds, all 'not serious'
The Council of State rejects Proximus' extreme-urgency suspension claim against the award of the IRISnet3 contract to Orange Belgium: all five pleas — alleged irregularity of the winner's free tools, abnormal pricing, regularisation issues and evaluation of qualitative criteria — are deemed 'not serious'.
What happened?
On 10 November 2022, the CIRB (Brussels IT centre) and the Brussels-Capital Region awarded a major framework agreement to Orange Belgium: the choice of a private shareholder and operational manager of IRISnet, the telecom network handling installation, management and security of fixed and mobile telecom, network, infrastructure and IoT services for the Brussels Region, CIRB and all affiliated 'pouvoirs adjudicateurs bénéficiaires' (PABs) — municipalities, public-welfare centres and public institutions. The previous contract (IRISnet2) had run for twelve years with Proximus. On 29 November 2022 Proximus filed an extreme-urgency suspension claim. Five pleas: (1) Orange allegedly submitted an irregular bid by offering 'preferential conditions' for external tools and free internal tools, falling outside price evaluation and distorting price comparison. (2) Equality breach in price evaluation. (3) Insufficient price scrutiny on Orange's allegedly abnormally low prices. (4) The specifications wrongly suggested substantial irregularities could be regularised or aggregated. (5) Manifest evaluation errors on a series of qualitative questions (questions 7, 10, 19, 47, 57 on knowledge management, climate towards staff, ICT management, certifications, SELFY culture). On 22 March 2023, the VIth chamber rejected each plea as 'not serious'. First plea: free tools fall under the quality criterion, not the price; no confusion with the price for executing the framework. Third plea: the report sufficiently motivated that prices were not abnormally low. Fifth plea: for each contested question, the 1- or 2-point gap was sufficiently motivated; no manifest error. Suspension refused, judgment immediately enforceable, costs reserved for the merits. Orange Belgium keeps the contract.
Why does this matter?
Extreme urgency is not a 'second round' for those who narrowly lose. The bar for a 'serious plea' is high: not 'it could have gone differently', but 'there is a manifest irregularity capable of voiding the award'. On large, long contracts like IRISnet3 — 12 years, millions per year — the temptation for the incumbent is to pile up every possible argument. But 108 pages of extreme-urgency judgment dismantling each plea are an expensive warning: pick one or two genuinely substantiated grounds, with hard numbers and clear breaches. A 'crusade' approach backfires — the judge sees through the fog and you pay for nothing. For contracting authorities: an evaluation report that motivates each 1-to-4 score per question, with named strengths and weaknesses, is the best defence against 'manifest evaluation error'.
The lesson
If you lose to a competitor and consider extreme urgency: pick one to three pleas where you can demonstrate manifest irregularity — exclusion-ground breach, formal specification violation, price correction without price scrutiny. Don't try a point-by-point requalitative re-scoring in extreme urgency: the Council won't reweigh, it only checks whether the motivation is 'sufficiently clear and precise'. Save the heavier guns for the merits annulment, where you have the time to actually build the case.
Ask yourself
Before filing extreme urgency on a 1-2 point gap on qualitative criteria: can you concretely show that the motivation is manifestly contradictory or unfounded for each contested question? Or are you simply unhappy with the outcome? In the second case, don't waste your 224 euros — invest it in a merits annulment.
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 →