Court stops EYDAP tender
The Council of State has blocked the tender for the assignment of the maintenance and operation of the Athens Water Company’s (EYDAP) external water supply system.
Interestingly, as the country’s highest administrative court ruled, the tender does not contravene the Constitution but the very legislation governing EYDAP, as the water supply network from the dams to Athens was considered a “single operating system” and the state must maintain its control.
The tender was announced by the Ministry of Infrastructure, since EYDAP Fixed Assets, which owns the external water supply system, belongs entirely to the state. It concerned the commissioning – through a partnership with a private individual – of the maintenance and operation for 20 years of the dams and reservoirs of Evinos, Mornos, Marathonas and Iliki, the boreholes of Parnitha and the Viotia plain, the aqueducts and the water transport networks to the pumping stations (400 km long). The tender had a budget of 291 million euros and a month ago it had passed to its second phase, with two interested parties, the joint ventures Terna-Intrakat and Aktor-Elektor.
Citizens, as well as various EYDAP unions, had appealed against the competition. A few days ago, therefore, Decision 1866/2022 stopped the tender. According to their lawyers, whose statement comes from an announcement by EYDAP’s scientific union, the Council of State determined that “water supply is a single system, from the sources to the taps, and EYDAP SA and EYDAP Fixed Assets constitute a single operating system.”
Furthermore, according to the legislation governing EYDAP and public-private partnerships, “a PPP concession is only permitted for the execution of a specific project at a time or the provision of a specific service and not, as in this case, for the general maintenance and operation of the water network as a whole.”
Therefore, the CoS annulled all the acts (proclamation, ministerial decision, interministerial committee decision) as illegal, because they violated the laws themselves, and not because the laws contradicted the Constitution, so there is no need to refer the case to the plenary for a final judgment.
