The Council of State has suspended the national railway's (SNCB/NMBS) decision to designate the Spanish company CAF as the preferred bidder for the purchase of new trains.
According to the Council, the railway company was not sufficiently transparent in its decision.
SNCB/NMBS had designated CAF as the preferred bidder for the construction of MR30 train sets. Two competitors which had also submitted bids, Alstom and Siemens, were dissatisfied.
The French company Alstom, which has a large production site in Bruges, appealed to the Council of State to suspend the decision.
The Council of State has now ruled in favour of Alstom, according to its website on Thursday. According to the Council, SNCB/NMBS' decision does not indicate which method it used to assess the technical quality of the various tenders.
In doing so, the railway company is "ignoring the principle of transparency" that a public company must observe when awarding public contracts, it said.
