Award of a contract without prior publication of a call for competition in the Official Journal of the European Union in the cases listed below
In view of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine caused by Russia’s invasion and the subsequent considerably increased influx of refugees to the EU-Ukrainian border, an urgent need for rapid deployment of FRONTEX Standing Corps officers to the Eastern EU border has emerged. Said need could neither have been foreseen prior to the invasion, nor is in any way attributable to the contracting authority. In this respect, to duly comply with the duty of care obligation, the deployed personnel should be equipped with appropriate level of personal protection equipment, namely bullet proof vests and ballistic helmets. Therefore, in addition to the already available stocks of such equipment, Frontex would need to ensure additional amounts of protective equipment so that all the officers to be deployed can be supplied with the body armour on time. Given the necessity to act promptly and efficiently to address the above-mentioned situation, securing purchase of personal protection equipment, namely bullet proof vests and ballistic helmets, via an exceptional negotiated procedure is, therefore, deemed necessary also due to the reasons listed below:
— lack of a duly running framework contract covering the above-mentioned supplies (the framework contract is currently under preparation and scheduled to be launched in Q2 2022 with expected signature date within Q4 2022);
— ongoing and/or imminent deployment of officers to the region in question and, hence, immediate need to equip them with the body protection.
As per Art. 11.1 Point (c), the contracting authority could resort to the use of exceptional negotiated procedure:
‘(c) In so far as is strictly necessary, where, for reasons of extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable by the contracting authority, it is impossible to comply with the time limits laid down in points 24, 26 and 41 and where the justification of such extreme urgency is not attributable to the contracting authority.’
We, therefore, consider Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the ongoing war in the latter provoking an unprecedent, significant refugee wave, as satisfying the above-mentioned conditions.