Public tender monitoring in Hungary

CPV codes and notice types

Two things decide whether a notice reaches your report: what is being procured, and what stage the procedure has reached.

The subject of a procurement must also be stated by reference to codes from the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV). The main vocabulary holds 9,454 codes, all of them searchable in our CPV code lookup. The first digits of a code identify the division, the remaining digits the group, the class and the category. Picking the code is not a formality: according to the European Commission's explanatory notes, using codes from the upper levels of the tree can mislead potential suppliers.

The notice type shows whether there is anything to bid on at all. A tender can be submitted in response to the notice initiating the procedure. A contract award notice gives market information, and a prior information notice signals a procurement still to come.

Why suitability has to be settled up front

Under the Public Procurement Act (Kbt.), suitability requirements can be set in three areas:

• economic and financial standing
• technical and professional ability
• entry in a register, or an authorisation

Some of these come down to producing a certificate. Others are matters of track record that cannot be made good inside the tender deadline. For works, the reference period examined is five years under Government Decree 321/2015. (X. 30.), and three years for supplies and services.

If your company falls short on a requirement, the remaining options are bringing in a capacity-providing entity or submitting a joint tender. Where the requirement rests on professional experience, the capacity-providing entity has to take part in performance as well (Section 65(9) of the Kbt.).

How much time is there to react?

The minimum tender submission deadline under the Kbt. depends on the procedure type:

• above the EU threshold, 30 days in an open procedure and 15 days in an accelerated procedure
• in the national procedure, 10 days for supplies and services and 15 days for works (Section 114(4) of the Kbt.)
• for the procedure the contracting authority designs itself under Section 117 of the Kbt., the Act sets no number of days

In the EU procedure, the answer to a request for clarification is due at the latest 6 days before the tender deadline, or 4 days in an accelerated procedure (Section 56(2) of the Kbt.). In the national procedure, including the ten-day deadline, the Act only requires a reasonable time (Section 114(6) of the Kbt.), so it pays to ask in the first few days. Extending the deadline is the contracting authority's decision.