1. Contracting authorities and contracting entities wishing to award a concession shall make known their intention by means of a concession notice.
2. Concession notices shall contain the information referred to in part of Annex IV and, where appropriate, any other information deemed useful by the contracting authority or entity, in accordance with the format of standard forms.
3. Contracting authorities and contracting entities wishing to award a concession for social and other specific services shall make known their intention of planned concession award through the publication of a prior information notice as soon as possible after the beginning of the budgetary year. Those notices shall contain the information set out in Annex XIII.
4. The Commission shall establish those standard forms. Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance with the advisory procedure referred to in Article 48.
5. By way of derogation from paragraph 1, the contracting authorities and entities shall not be required to publish a concession notice in any of the following cases:
(a) where no tenders or no suitable tenders or no applications have been submitted in response to a concession procedure, provided that the initial conditions of the concession contract are not substantially altered and on condition that a report is sent to the Commission or to the national oversight body designated pursuant to Article 84 of Directive [replacing Directive 2004/18/EC] where they so request;
(b) where the works or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator due to the absence of competition for technical reasons, the protection of patents, copyrights or other intellectual property rights or he protection of other exclusive rights and where no reasonable alternative or substitute exists and the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the concession award;
(c) for new works or services consisting in the repetition of similar works or services entrusted to the economic operator to which the same contracting authorities or contracting entities awarded an original concession subject to the obligation referred to in paragraph 1, provided that such works or services are in conformity with a basic project for which the original concession was awarded. The basic project shall mention the extent of possible additional works or services and the conditions under which they will be awarded.
As soon as the first project is put up for tender the total estimated cost of subsequent works or services shall be taken into consideration by the contracting authorities or contracting entities when they apply the provisions of Article 5
6. For the purposes of point (a) of the first subparagraph, a tender shall be considered not to be suitable where:
- it is irregular or unacceptable, and
- it is completely irrelevant to the concession, being incapable of meeting the contracting authority or contracting entity's needs as specified in the concession documents.
Tenders shall be considered to be irregular, where they do not comply with the concession documents or where the prices offered are sheltered from normal competitive forces.
Tenders shall be considered to be unacceptable in any of the following cases:
(a) where they have been received late;
(b) they have been submitted by tenderers who do not have the requisite qualifications;
(c) their price exceeds the contracting authority or contracting entity's budget as determined prior to the launching of the concession award procedure and documented in writing;
(d) they have been found to be abnormally low