The court confirmed a fine of 110,000 CZK for Prague from the Office for Protection of Competition for splitting contracts

Brno - The Regional Court in Brno today confirmed a fine of 110,000 crowns, which the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) imposed on the City of Prague last year for splitting contracts in two cases. The first case involved a study and project for the renovation of Hall 24 in the Prague Market in Holešovice, and the second concerned work on the portal Praha.eu. Prague contested the ÚOHS decision with a lawsuit at the Regional Court, which has now dismissed its lawsuit, said court spokesperson Klára Belkovová today.

As ÚOHS stated earlier, the capital city divided contracts for the architectural study and project documentation for the reconstruction of Hall 24 in the Prague Market into two contracts. The first, for the architectural study, was valued at 488,000 crowns and was assigned to an architect in August 2020. The second contract for the project documentation, which was based on the study, amounted to 1,855,000 crowns and was assigned to a designer in May 2021.

The capital city acted similarly in the case of the development and implementation of the new portal Praha.eu, when it successively signed five contracts with three different suppliers. The total value of these contracts exceeded two million crowns.

In both cases, the magistrate concluded contracts without a procurement procedure. "In all prosecuted cases, they were functional units, the values of which the contracting authority should have summed up and assigned contracts according to the sum of the values of the relevant functionally interconnected performances," the office stated last year after its chairman Petr Mlsna confirmed the fine for Prague. Prague then had to pay the fine but contested it by filing a lawsuit with the regional court, which has now dismissed it. The capital city can challenge the ruling by filing a cassation complaint with the Supreme Administrative Court.