Bidding consortia may be very beneficial to the public sector, but at the same time they can serve as bid rigging devices to eliminate competition. This article discusses illustrative European cases involving consortia or cooperative joint ventures between undertakings taking part in a public procurement procedure. It looks at the European Commission’s Revised Guidelines for the assessment of horizontal co-operation agreements 2022, considering whether they clarified how economic operators can submit joint tenders without infringing EU competition law.
Keywords: bid rigging; collusion; joint bidding; bidding consortia; horizontal guidelines