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Agreement to bid in a consortium for a public contract can be regarded as a cartel. Even though joint bidding is explicitly allowed by the Public Procurement Law to comply with the qualification criteria, such co-operation can be incompatible with the Competition Law, if (a) the members of the consortium are competitors, and (b) one of the members is capable of performing the contract by itself, and/or (c) the consortium is used as a guise for illegal information exchange.

The Competition Council is currently focused on anti-competitive agreements in the public procurement sector. The fine for cartel agreements is up to 10% of each participant’s annual turnover.