 ‘eTendering’  means the platform used by Europol for managing calls for tenders 6 . The platform is an extension of TED which consists of the publication of procurement documents and the management of questions and answers. In some of the procurement procedures, the electronic submission system (eSubmission) is integrated in eTendering. 

‘Invitation’  refers to the ‘Invitation to tender & tender specifications’ including its annexes and, if applicable, also to ‘Invitation to Step II’ including its annexes. 

‘Procurement documents’ mean any document produced or referred to by the contracting authority to describe or determine elements of the procurement procedure, including: the publicity measures (e.g. contract notice, corrigenda); the invitation to tender; the tender specifications, including technical specifications and the relevant criteria, or the descriptive documents in the case of a competitive dialogue; the draft contract. 

‘Subcontracting’ , in this context, is the situation where a contract has been or is to be established between the contracting authority and a contractor only and where the contractor or candidate/tenderer, in order to carry out that contract, enters into legal commitments with other entities for performing parts of the contract. The contracting authority has no direct legal commitment with the subcontractor(s). In practice, any third party involved in the contract implementation which has no legal link with the contracting authority but with the contractor will be considered as subcontractor (e.g. any other company which does not participate in the contract execution but provides financial capacity). 

‘TED’  means Tenders Electronic Daily database ( http://ted.europa.eu), where all contract notices published in the Official Journal ‘’S’’ series (OJ S) are available. 

‘Tenderer’ means an economic operator that has submitted a tender (whether in a one-step procedure or in Step II of a two-step procedure). 

‘Tenders’  submitted in the context of a procurement procedure are also designated ‘ offers ’. 

## 1.3. Implications of submitting a request to participate/tender 

Requests to participate/tenders shall be submitted strictly in accordance with the conditions set out in the procurement documents. If any other conditions are attached to or referred to in the request to participate/tender, the candidate/tenderer should declare that such conditions are entirely withdrawn. 

The period of validity of the tender, during which the tenderer may not modify the terms of the tender in any respect, must be at least six months following the time limit for receipt of tenders. The successful tenderer  must maintain its offer for a further four months from the date of the written notification of Europol’s intention to award it the contract. 

Europol reserves the right to decline without further comment any proposal that does not accept its draft contract. 

The submitted tender is binding on the tenderer to whom the contract is awarded for the duration of the contract. 

All costs incurred for the preparation and submission of tenders are to be borne by the tenderers and will not be reimbursed. 

