AG: dialogue ranges must reveal criteria order, not just limits

Advocate General Biondi's OpinionEuropa of 8 October 2026 in Case C-390/25 (HUS-yhtymä)Europa addresses, for the first time at Court level, competitive dialogue under Directive 2014/24/EU. The Finnish Supreme Administrative Court referred questions from a dispute over the Helsinki and Uusimaa health-district authority's dialogue for a procurement-management system: the notice advertised price at 30–70%Europa, functional characteristics at 15–35% and expert-group competence at 15–35%, while the final-tender invitation set price at 30% and quality at 70% (additional functionalities 35 points, interview 35 points). The contract went to SC Software Oy with Cloudia Oy as reserve supplier; the first-instance court annulled the award over the breadth of the rangesEuropa.

On timing, the Advocate General proposes that Article 30 and the second subparagraph of Article 67(5) do not preclude an authority that advertised ranges from fixing the definitive weighting in the invitation to submit final tenders after the dialogueEuropa. Ranges must appear up front in the notice or descriptive documentEuropa so weighting rules are known from the start, but the directive says nothing about when within a dialogue they must be finalisedEuropa; requiring finalisation before the dialogue ends would curtail the flexibility that is the procedure's point, since solutions are only identified through the dialogue. Once the dialogue closes, the authority may set final weights within the pre-announced rangesEuropa for tenderers to use. This respects equal treatment and transparency.

On breadth, the Advocate General proposes the opposite answer: the second subparagraph of Article 67(5), read with Article 30, does not allow notice ranges from which the final order of importance is not apparentEuropa. The HUS ranges permitted two mirror-image outcomes — price 70%/quality 30% or, as happened, quality 70%/price 30%Europa — so tenderers could not know whether price or quality would dominateEuropa. The “appropriate maximum spread” limit exists to guarantee that threshold of equal treatment and transparency; the fallback third subparagraph (decreasing order of importance where weighting is objectively impossible) marks the irreducible minimum, and a general ranges rule cannot be more permissive than that exceptionEuropa. Letting the order flip after seeing participants' solutions would allow unforeseeable weightings favouring one tender. No provision derogates Article 67(5) for dialoguesEuropa, and the fact that the final weights fell inside the announced ranges does not cure the defectEuropa.

Legal basis: Articles 30 and 67(5) of Directive 2014/24/EUEuropa of 26 February 2014 on public procurement.