The tender commission for the concession of Podgorica and Tivat airports will have to re-explain the ranking list of bidders, because the Concession Commission of the Government of Montenegro determined that it does not have a sufficiently clear and valid explanation of the scoring, which opens up room for arbitrariness and calls into question the transparency of the procedure.
This means that the Tender Commission, chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Development, will Nick Djelosaj must explain in detail how it arrived at each individual rating and number of points, because without this the ranking list cannot be a valid basis for the Government's decision to award the concession. In practice, this delays the entire process for making a final decision regarding the tender that was announced in 2019.
According to the ranking, the first place is taken by the South Korean company "Incheon International Airport Corporation" (IIAC) with 96,18 points awarded, and the second place is taken by the Luxembourg-American consortium "Corporacion América Airports SA" (CAAP) with 65,15 points awarded.
"Vijesti" has access to the decision of the Concessions Commission, which decided on the complaint of the CAAP, which filed an appeal. The CAAP has the right to file an appeal with the Administrative Court against the decision of the State Commission within 20 days from the date of receipt of the decision, and appeals can be filed again with the Concessions Commission against the new repeated report of the Tender Commission. The Tender Commission does not have a deadline within which it must supplement the report with an explanation of the scoring.
The decision, which "Vijesti" has access to, states that the CAAP pointed out that the ranking list lacks an explanation and instruction on legal remedies and that it was not personally served, that there was an illegal repeated scoring of the bids, that the IFC (the government's consultant in this matter - the International Finance Corporation) exceeded its authority, that the independence of the commission members was violated, that the awarding of zero points was not legal and that there was indiscriminate disclosure of confidential information to the public and influence of the Government of Montenegro on the members of the Tender Commission. The CAAP proposed, as stated, that the ranking list be returned with an order to hold a new session of the Tender Commission and confirm the first evaluation in which it was ranked as the first and only bidder.
"The Concessions Commission of the Government of Montenegro accepted the objection as partially justified and found that the procedure for evaluating the technical part of the bids was affected by irregularities that must be eliminated," is the position of the Commission, which noted that regarding the disclosure of confidential information and the influence of the Government on the actions of the Tender Commission, there is no specific evidence in the case files, and the objection does not contain any concrete evidence about this.
The decision states that Article 30, paragraph 2 of the Law on Concessions defines that the Tender Commission is obliged, among other things, to submit a report on the conducted procedure with an explanation of the ranking list of bidders, which means that the established ranking list must have an explanation.
Zero points may be awarded.
The Concessions Commission has determined that it is not disputed that a bid can be scored with 0 points, but only if there is a clear and justified basis for this - such as failure to meet the conditions of the public invitation or another objective reason. The same applies to the award of a maximum of 5 points - and then it is mandatory to state why the bidder fully met the required criteria.
The tender commission evaluated the technical part of the bids twice and allowed the Koreans to proceed to the second round of evaluating the financial part of the bids only after the IFC intervened, claiming that the tender rules on voting had not been respected. During the first scoring of the technical bids, the IIAC remained “below the line” because some members gave zero points. Đeljošaj publicly accused the IFC of working for the Koreans and demanded that they sign a statement taking responsibility for the legal interpretation, which the IFC refused to do.
"Regarding the issue of "zero points", the Concessions Commission finds that, in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Concessions and the Regulation on the detailed manner of implementing the public tender procedure in the open and two-stage concession award procedure and the Law on Administrative Procedure, it is not impossible to evaluate an offer with "zero points", is the position of the Concessions Commission.
It is further stated that the explanation of the assessment must be such that it enables the bidder and any other objective observer to clearly understand why it received a certain number of points according to any of the criteria, and that if the assessments of the commission members differ significantly, this must be contained in the Report on the conducted bid evaluation procedure with a ranking list.
"The fact is that the report provides certain reasons for each of the criteria and the determined number of points, however, it is obvious that only parts of the IFC analysis were copied in a cursory manner, and that, although it was the Tender Commission's legal obligation, the Report does not contain its own analysis of the submitted bids. Therefore, the question can rightly be raised whether the members of the Tender Commission acted in accordance with Article 12 of the Law on Administrative Procedure, i.e. whether they evaluated the bids based on a conscientious and careful assessment of each piece of evidence separately and all evidence together, as well as based on the results of the entire administrative procedure. Due to the lack of reasons for the evaluation of the bids, the contested ranking list cannot be examined in relation to the allegations of the complaint. Therefore, and due to the insufficient explanation of the ranking list, the Concessions Commission cannot examine the legality and correctness of the evaluation of the bids and the ranking of the bidders, as well as whether the criteria for evaluating the bids and ranking of the bidders were correctly applied," the decision states.
Second scoring legal
The Commission concluded that the allegations in CAAP's objections regarding the repeated evaluation of the bids were unfounded, because the Tender Commission, after several sessions in June 2025, ultimately unanimously decided to repeat the evaluation of both technical bids in the analysis and scoring of the Air Accessibility Development Plan and the Investment Plan Bid, after which both bidders exceeded the threshold of 80 points and qualified for the next phase.
According to Articles 13 and 14 of the Regulation on the detailed manner of conducting the public tender procedure in the open and two-stage concession award procedure, the ranking list of bidders becomes final only when it is signed by all members of the Tender Commission, so in this case the only final one is the one drawn up after the repeated evaluation, while the previous scoring cannot be interpreted as the end of the procedure.
"Therefore, in the end, and taking into account all of the above, the Concessions Commission believes that the review of the evaluation of the bids and the new scoring are not illegal, and since it was done on a unanimous proposal, with a statement of the reasons for such action and because everything was accompanied by detailed minutes, so that such action did not violate the legality of the procedure," it is written, among other things, in the decision, which states that the Concessions Commission also finds confirmation of the legality of the Tender Commission's decision to repeat the evaluation of certain criteria (the Air Accessibility Development Plan and the Investment Plan) in the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
"Because of all the above, the Concessions Commission of the Government of Montenegro accepted the objection as partially justified and found that the process of evaluating the technical part of the bids was affected by irregularities that must be eliminated," the decision reads, among other things.
The IFC opinion is non-binding.
The Commission assessed as unfounded the allegations of the objections relating to the role and legal opinion of the IFC, because it has only an advisory and instructive character and is not binding on the members of the Tender Commission.
During the procedure, IFC acted within the framework of its contractual obligations, providing analysis, recommendations and support in the evaluation of bids, but without the right to formal decision-making. “However, it follows from the minutes that individual members of the commission changed the points in accordance with the opinion of IFC, without an independent and reasoned assessment, although they were obliged to use their professional knowledge and independently justify their assessments,” the Commission said.
It is further stated that responsibility for irregularities, according to Article 26 of the Law on Concessions, lies with the members of the Tender Commission, who are appointed as experts and are obliged to provide their own, clearly explained evaluations of the bids.
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