Complaints regarding the awarding body’s assessment are, as a general rule, not reviewed, since regulations give the awarding body a broad professional discretion with regard to purchasing. The Complaints Board therefore does not address whether the exercise of discretion was reasonable, appropriate, etc. The professional discretion can only be reviewed if the awarding body has violated regulations by using incorrect facts as a basis, or by exercising a non-objective, strongly unreasonable or arbitrary discretion.

If the secretariat finds that a substantial part of the complaint concerns issues within the scope of the awarding body’s professional discretion, the complaint could be refused as inappropriate to be handled in the complaints board. The same applies if the parties disagree on the factual conditions and the decision will depend on a degree of evaluation that the complaints body can only undertake with difficulty. The complainant will then normally not be able to submit a new complaint that concerns the same procurement.

The Complaints Board often experiences extremely extensive and some times poorly defined complaints. In order to ease the work of the complaint board, complainants are asked to concentrate on the principal issue, and to include in the commentary from the complainant on the awarding body’s response a short summary of the points regarding the breach of the regulations that are wished to be dealt with. This summary should not exceed one page.