Evidence first: checking a requirement against the tender documents

A tender is judged against its own documents. Under EU law, a contract can only be awarded to a tender that complies with the requirements, conditions and criteria in the notice and the procurement documents, from a tenderer that is not excluded and meets the selection criteria (Directive 2014/24/EU, Article 56). Errors or omissions can lead to a tender being rejected (Your Europe).

A summary compresses. It can drop a condition, mix up two lots, or describe a version that has since been corrected. A language model can also state, with confidence, something the documents do not say. None of this makes summaries useless. It means every statement in them needs a way back to the source.

The official notice

Published in full in the language or languages the buyer chose. Only those versions are authentic; the other official EU languages receive a summary (Article 51(3) of the directive).

The procurement documents

Everything the buyer produces or refers to in order to describe the procurement, such as technical specifications, proposed conditions of contract and forms (Article 2). The notice gives the internet address where they can be accessed (Article 53).

Language versions of the documents

A notice can name the official languages of the documents, which are equally valid (BT-708), and the languages of unofficial versions, which are not official translations and are provided only for information (BT-737) (Regulation (EU) 2019/1780).

Clarifications and changes

Answers the buyer gives to bidders’ questions, and change notices published after the original notice.

Good evidence names the document, its version or date, the section or page, the passage itself, and when it was last checked.

1. Start from the official notice. Note the procedure identifier (BT-04), the notice version and the lot you are interested in.
2. Open the documents from the address in the notice (BT-15), not from a copy you saved earlier.
3. Find the passage and read the text around it. Is it an exclusion ground, a selection criterion (suitability to pursue the activity, economic and financial standing, technical and professional ability), a requirement of the specification, or an award criterion? Each has different consequences (Articles 57, 58 and 67).
4. Check that it applies to your lot and to the current version. Look for change notices and for an indication that the procurement documents have changed (BT-718).
5. Check the deadline with its time zone, and whether it has been extended.
6. If something is unclear, ask the buyer through the channel named in the documents, before the time limit for additional information (BT-13).
7. Write down what you checked: document, section, version and date.

For a grant call, the same applies to the call conditions and the funding guideline. On the EU Funding & Tenders Portal, for example, admissibility and eligibility conditions are set out in the call conditions on the topic page (Online Manual).

A change notice contains the whole earlier notice with the changes applied, plus a section describing them. When it changes an earlier change notice, it integrates all previous changes, and only the latest ones are described in its change section. Change notices can also report changes to information outside the notice, such as the procurement documents (TED developer documentation).

Changes can move deadlines. The buyer must extend the time limit for tenders when it makes significant changes to the procurement documents, or when additional information requested in good time is not supplied at least six days before the deadline (Article 47(3)). A notice cancelled by a change notice is void, but the procedure itself is not cancelled by it (eForms FAQ).

So a passage you checked last week may no longer be the passage that counts. Record the version, and check again before you submit.

When a search tool or an assistant cannot find a passage that supports a statement, the honest answer is to say so, not to fill the gap with a plausible guess. “Not found in the indexed documents” is that answer.

It is also a precise answer. It does not say that a requirement does not exist. Documents can be scanned images without a text layer, in formats a tool cannot read, restricted to registered bidders, or simply not processed yet. A “not found” is a prompt to open the original documents, or to ask the buyer.

Inteliwert is built around this rule. Each fact on an opportunity page links to the official notice, with the time it was last checked; where there is no evidence, it says “not found in the indexed documents”. Try the search.

Where a summary, a portal copy or an AI answer differs from the official notice and documents, the official text prevails. The rules behind it come from EU law, such as Directive 2014/24/EU above the EU thresholds, and from national law. In Germany that means Part 4 of the GWB and the procurement regulations above the thresholds (Federal Procurement Office), and budget law with rules such as the UVgO below them (Federal Procurement Office: UVgO).

Treat eligibility, fit and any score as your own judgement, made on the documents. An assistant can help you read faster; it cannot decide for you whether you qualify.