Lieven Peeters, William Timmermans, Suzy Miller and Charlotte Boumal, lawyers in ALTIUS' Real Estate & Regulatory practice, wrote the Belgian Chapter of the "Getting the deal through - Construction" book published by Law Business Research.
At the occasion of the second edition of REALTY, ALTIUS and Tiberghien have published a second edition of the "Real Estate Gazette". This newspaper provides updates on the latest real estate and regulatory trends in Belgium.
William Timmermans and Tim Bruyninckx contributed to the Public Procurement Yearbook 2009-2010. This yearbook contains a number of articles written by leading Belgian procurement law experts. In their contribution, William and Tim propose a number of changes to the general terms and conditions for the performance of procurement contracts entered into with public authorities, as established by Royal Decree of 26 September 1996. These general terms and conditions seem no longer adapted to the economic reality and are in some ways even detrimental to a swift performance of the procurement contract. Therefore, the article seeks to open the debate and aims to be a starting point for the required reform of these general terms and conditions.
The Acoset judgment of the ECJ dated 15 October 2009 (C-196/08) was related to a dispute about an institutionalised public-private partnership (IPPP). A local authority wanted to grant a concession to a newly-created semi-public company, whose minority shareholder would be a private company selected by an open tender procedure. The minority shareholder would be responsible for the operations of the semi-public company.
The question put to the Court was in essence rather simple: if a local authority wants to grant a concession to a semi-public company, does it have to organise two tender procedures: one for selecting the minority private shareholder in the semi-public company and another to award the concession to the semi-public company? Or, alternatively, is one tender procedure sufficient? The Court chose the latter option, and rightly so.
In the Horizon Pleiades case, the Council of State was confronted with an interesting question: if a public authority organises a procedure to select its partner for a PPP company, which will perform works or services which would normally be covered by the Procurement Directives, does the selection procedure have to comply with the rules laid down in the Procurement Directives or can a “light” selection procedure be used? In its ruling, dated 19 June 2009, the Council of State pierced the veil of a so-called“partnership tender procedure” and held that it must comply with the rules laid down in the Directives.
On 23 April 2009, the ECJ held that Belgium did not properly transpose Procurement Directive 2004/18 into national law (case C-292/07). In fact, Belgium already has new procurement Acts (dating from 15 and 16 June 2006) but they have not entered into force, because the new Royal Decrees implementing these Acts have not been adopted. Therefore, Belgium decided to modify the old Royal Decrees (from 1996). This article will analyse two topics: the negotiated procedure and the procedure for handling abnormally low offers.
On the occasion of REALTY 2009, Belgium's premier International Real Estate Forum, that took place 5-7 May 2009, ALTIUS and Tiberghien have published the Real Estate Gazette. This newspaper deals with current hot topics and recent legal developments in the real estate business in Belgium.
