- Office of Electronic Communications

The President of UKE annuls 2007 tender

The President of UKE annulled a 2007 tender for two general exclusive frequency licences, each covering 49 duplex channels with 95 MHz duplex spacing in the 1710-1730 and 1805-1825 frequency bands in the whole area of Poland, for use in the public telecommunications network by 31 December 2022.

The President of UKE annulled the tender taking account of the legal assessment of the Supreme Administrative Court presented in its judgement of 8 May 2014, II GSK 305/13 and the judgement of 20 October 2016, II GSK 262/15.

In the Court's assessment the condition defined in Article 118d (1) of the Telecommunications Act obliging the President of UKE to annul the tender, i.e. gross violation of the law, has been met. The gross violation of the law took place because of a formalistic approach of the Tender Committee which required that each page of the offer should be initialled, and applied this requirement also to cases where the signature of an authorised representative of the tender participant was placed on a given page of the offer. Such conduct according to the Court flagrantly violates Article 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland since it fails to meet public interest objectives related to reliability of the tender procedure and does not take account of the principle of proportionality arising from Article 2 of the Constitution.

The decision was issued at first instance and the parties to the proceedings are entitled to file requests for retrial of the case.

The decision in question does not affect the frequency licence decisions issued after the tender. These decisions remain valid and constitute the basis for the provision of telecommunications services.