Europe’s top court has ruled that the European Defence Agency mishandled a $291M satellite communications contract, but the deal itself survives.
The EU General Court annulled the agency’s decision to award the four-year framework to Telespazio France, finding the company’s bid should have been rejected because it missed mandatory tender requirements. The contract was already signed, so it stays in force and the agency can keep placing orders with Telespazio.
Beyond annulling the decision, the court ordered EDA to pay Airbus Defence and Space and Marlink Events a combined €4.32M. Those two firms formed the consortium behind the rejected bid that brought the case, and the payout matches the profit the court said the contract would have delivered.
The July 1 judgment was published in the EU’s Official Journal on Aug. 17. In the court’s view, the Airbus-Marlink consortium would have had a 95% chance of winning the 2023 tender had the procurement been run properly. EDA said it is evaluating how to respond and weighing judicial remedies, while noting that an abrupt service disruption would carry operational costs.
The framework sits inside EDA’s EU SatCom Market program, billed as the agency’s largest joint procurement effort, which supplies governments and EU institutions with commercially available satellite capacity. Airbus held the previous three frameworks, the most recent with Marlink, before the contested award.
