The contract clauses may be open to negotiation as long as they are justified by the tenderer and deemed reasonable for the scope of the contract. All the clauses which derive from an applicable regulation/law are not negotiable. 

Only tenderer(s) for whom the verification of all elements did not reveal grounds for rejection can be awarded the contract. 

The evaluation will be based on the information and evidence contained in the requests to participate/ tenders and, if applicable, on additional information and evidence provided at the request of the Contracting authority during the procedure. If any of the declarations or information provided proves to be false, the Contracting authority  may impose administrative sanctions (exclusion or financial penalties) on the entity providing the false declarations/information. 

  If the evaluation of one or more elements in either step demonstrates that there are grounds for rejection, the request to participate/tender will be rejected and will not be subjected to further full evaluation. The unsuccessful candidates/tenderers will be informed of the ground for rejection without being given feedback on the non-assessed content of their requests to participate/tenders. 

## 3.1. Step 1: Exclusion criteria 

The objective of the exclusion criteria is to assess whether the candidate is in any of the exclusion situations listed in Article 136(1) of the Financial Regulation. 

Candidates/tenderers established to be in an exclusion situation will be rejected. 

As evidence of non-exclusion each candidate needs to submit with its request to participate a Declaration on Honour$^{4}$ in the model available in Annex 3 .$^{5}$ The declaration must be signed by an authorised representative of the entity providing the declaration. 

The initial verification of non-exclusion of candidates will be done on the basis of the submitted declarations and consultation of the European Union's Early Detection and Exclusion System. The documents mentioned as supporting evidence in the Declaration on Honour need to be provided whenever requested and where this is necessary to ensure the proper conduct of the procedure within a deadline given by the Contracting authority $^{6}$. 

