EC extends Intel government tendering probe
The EC believes that references to specific brands constitute a violation of its Directive 93/36/EEC on public supply contracts. Specifying merely a clock rate would be contrary to Article 28 of the EC Treaty, which prohibits barriers to intra-Community trade, it is thought.
The EC's requests are in the form of letters of formal notice, the first stage of the infringement procedure under Article 226 of the EC Treaty. The member states in question will have two months to reply. If the replies are not satisfactory and it is found that European law has been infringed, the EC may formally ask these member states to rectify the irregularities. Failure to bring the contracts into line may result in cases before the European Court of Justice.
Three variants have been identified in the invitations to tender in question - requirements to supply "Intel" microprocessors, "Intel or equivalent" microprocessors, or microprocessors using a specific clock rate. Under European law on public procurement, a brand may be specified only if it is otherwise impossible to describe the product sufficiently precisely and intelligibly. There are, however, ways of describing microprocessors and particularly the performance required. For example, there are various "benchmarks" for this purpose. Merely specifying a clock rate is not
sufficient for assessing the performance of a computer. The EC sent letters of formal notice on similar cases to Italy and Germany at the beginning of this year.
