The timing was wrong, everything had to be redone. The one recently approved was withdrawn, and a new tender will be needed to assign—if successful—the territorial continuity air route between Alghero and Milan.
After the first tender failed, the Region immediately initiated the process for a new call for tenders, but now Brussels has stopped it. The European Commission has deemed it necessary to guarantee the standard six-month publication period in the Official Journal of the European Union, even though it was a re-issue of the previously unsuccessful tender.
The Region maintains that the error is not theirs, but that the issue stems from "a different interpretation by the European Commission of Regulation 1008/2008 and its guidelines," says Regional Transport Councillor Barbara Manca. "European legislation does not specifically address the case of a failed tender and subsequent republishing of the notice. Precisely for this reason , the Region applied the same interpretative criterion already used in the previous territorial continuity tender , when in that case too the tenders for Alghero were unsuccessful. The exact same procedural process was followed, without the European Commission raising any objections."
The point is that if a ministerial extension decree does not intervene, Alghero would be left without continuous flights to Milan between October and February.
(Unioneonline)
