Report 2011 - EFTA Court

I FACTS AND PROCEDURE
ORDER
1 The applicant is a private company which provides youth care
services and is registered in Norway, with its head office in
Oslo. in 2008 the company provided care for more than 250
children in Norway, employed 350 people, and had a turnover of
approximately NOK 350 million. The applicant is a subsidiary of
the Aleris Group, which has a turnover of approximately SEK 3
billion, employs more than 5000 people and is headquartered in
Stockholm, Sweden.
2 On 20 June 2008, the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth
and Family Affairs published a contract notice for placements in
child welfare institutions. According to the contract documents,
the contract was to be awarded during a two stage negotiated
procedure, the first of which would be a pre-qualification stage,
in which the Directorate would select only those parties which
satisfied the criteria set out in the contract notice. A key criterion
in this respect was that only non-commercial private institutions
would be permitted to go onto the second stage. Consequently,
the applicant, which is a commercial service provider, was not
able to compete for a contract.
3 On 3 February 2009, the applicant lodged a complaint against
Norway with the EFTA Surveillance Authority (hereinafter “ESA”),
alleging that by permitting the exclusion of commercial operators
from this award procedure, the Norwegian Directorate for
Children, Youth and Family Affairs, Norway had failed to fulfil its
obligations arising from Article 2 of Directive 2004/18/EC on
the coordination of procedures for the award of public works
contracts, public supply contracts and public service contracts;
and Articles 3, 31 and 36 of the Agreement on the European
Economic Area (hereinafter “EEA”).
4 in the complaint, the applicant submitted that the contracts
covered the need for 170 to 300 places in child welfare
institutions for four years (1 December 2008 to 30 November
Case E-13/10 Aleris Ungplan AS v xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx EFTA Surveillance Authority
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