A 37% discount 'verified' with one boilerplate sentence? That is not a price review.
The Council of State suspends an award because the Walloon Region failed to concretely verify the 30-40% discount on the combined bid of the winner — the boilerplate line 'after verification, the prices are normal and acceptable' is dismissed as a stock phrase.
What happened?
SPW Mobilité Infrastructures launches a services contract for an inventory of roadside trees along the non-structural Walloon road network — an estimated 30,000 trees split into lot 1 (geolocation and simple field inventory) and lot 2 (advanced phytosanitary inventory). Two bidders file offers: Krinkels and the ApiTrees/DrivenBy consortium. The specifications require a minimum score of 35/50 on the qualitative 'methodology note' criterion and exclude every bid below that threshold. Krinkels — the cheapest bidder — scores only 20/50 on methodology (manual GPS and roulette measurements, no cross-checking with modern techniques like Mobile Mapping, weak team composition and safety approach) and is excluded on both lots. ApiTrees/DrivenBy wins both lots at €143,850 (lot 1) and €158,550 (lot 2), after a discount which, when both lots are awarded together, amounts to roughly 37% on lot 1 and more than 40% on lot 2. Krinkels attacks the award in extreme urgency, arguing that the contracting authority failed to concretely verify whether those massive discounts were sustainable. The award decision indeed contains only one sentence on price verification: 'Considering that, after verification, the prices offered by the ApiTrees/DrivenBy consortium for the various items are deemed normal and acceptable in light of the proposed methodology.' The Council of State rules that this line 'looks more like a stock phrase' than a concrete price verification — especially for discounts of 30-40%. Nothing in the administrative file shows that the authority actually took the offered discounts into account. The plea is serious, the balance of interests favours Krinkels, and the suspension is granted.
Why does this matter?
This judgment makes clear that price verification is not a box-ticking exercise. Article 84 of the Public Procurement Act requires the authority to check prices; Articles 33 and 35 of the Implementing Royal Decree operationalise that duty. The Council now explicitly adds that concrete verification 'implies, for example, taking into account any discounts offered'. This applies even without an explicit suspicion of abnormally low prices. When gunning to a bid with a substantial discount — especially above 15-20% — the decision itself or at least the administrative file must show that the authority actually scrutinised that discount. For bid managers, this is leverage: if a competitor wins with a sizeable discount, check whether the authority can demonstrate it genuinely verified that discount.
The lesson
If you award a contract to a bid with a substantial discount (roughly from 20-25% upwards, certainly on combined lots), do not limit your price-verification reasoning to 'after verification the prices were found to be normal'. Show concretely — either in the award decision or in the internal verification report — which items took which price reductions, which economies of scale or methodological choices justify the discount, and how the prices compare to your estimate or to comparable market prices. Without that concrete analysis, you risk a suspension the moment an excluded competitor challenges the award.
Ask yourself
Is your winner's discount above 20% (especially on combined lots)? Does your award decision or verification report say anything more than 'the prices are normal after verification'? Can you show, item by item, how you verified that discount? If not: add it before the standstill period expires.
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 →