Directive 2014/25/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2014 on procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors and repealing Directive 2004/17/EC (Text with EEA relevance)

For the purposes of this Directive, the following definitions apply:

1. ‘supply, works and service contracts’ means contracts for pecuniary interest concluded in writing between one or more contracting entities and one or more economic operators and having as their object the execution of works, the supply of products or the provision of services;

2. ‘works contracts’ means contracts having as their object one of the following:

   1. the execution, or both the design and execution, of works related to one of the activities within the meaning of Annex I;

   2. the execution, or both the design and execution, of a work;

   3. the realisation by whatever means of a work corresponding to the requirements specified by the contracting entity exercising a decisive influence on the type or design of the work;

3. ‘a work’ means the outcome of building or civil engineering works taken as a whole which is sufficient in itself to fulfil an economic or technical function;

4. ‘supply contracts’ means contracts having as their object the purchase, lease, rental or hire-purchase, with or without an option to buy, of products. A supply contract may include, as an incidental matter, siting and installation operations;

5. ‘service contracts’ means contracts having as their object the provision of services other than those referred to in point 2;

6. ‘economic operator’ means any natural or legal person, or a contracting entity, or a group of such persons and/or entities, including any temporary association of undertakings, which offers the execution of works and/or a work, the supply of products or the provision of services on the market;

7. ‘tenderer’ means an economic operator that has submitted a tender;

8. ‘candidate’ means an economic operator that has sought an invitation or has been invited to take part in a restricted or negotiated procedure, in a competitive dialogue or in an innovation partnership;

9. ‘procurement document’ means any document produced or referred to by the contracting entity to describe or determine elements of the procurement or the procedure, including the contract notice, the periodic indicative notice or the notices on the existence of a qualification system where they are used as a means of calling for competition, the technical specifications, the descriptive document, proposed conditions of contract, formats for the presentation of documents by candidates and tenderers, information on generally applicable obligations and any additional documents;

10. ‘centralised purchasing activities’ means activities conducted on a permanent basis, in one of the following forms:

    1. the acquisition of supplies and/or services intended for contracting entities,

    2. the award of contracts or the conclusion of framework agreements for works, supplies or services intended for contracting entities;

11. ‘ancillary purchasing activities’ means activities consisting in the provision of support to purchasing activities, in particular in the following forms:

    1. technical infrastructure enabling contracting entities to award public contracts or to conclude framework agreements for works, supplies or services;

    2. advice on the conduct or design of procurement procedures;

    3. preparation and management of procurement procedures on behalf and for the account of the contracting entity concerned;

12. ‘central purchasing body’ means a contracting entity within the meaning of Article 4(1) of this Directive or a contracting authority within the meaning of point 1 of Article 2(1) of Directive 2014/24/EU providing centralised purchasing activities and, possibly, ancillary purchasing activities.

    Procurement carried out by a central purchasing body in order to perform centralised purchasing activities shall be deemed to be procurement for the pursuit of an activity as described in Articles 8 to 14. Article 18 shall not apply to procurement carried out by a central purchasing body in order to perform centralised purchasing activities;

13. ‘procurement service provider’ means a public or private body, which offers ancillary purchasing activities on the market;

14. ‘written’ or ‘in writing’ means any expression consisting of words or figures which can be read, reproduced and subsequently communicated, including information transmitted and stored by electronic means;

15. ‘electronic means’ means electronic equipment for the processing (including digital compression) and storage of data which is transmitted, conveyed and received by wire, by radio, by optical means or by other electromagnetic means;

16. ‘life cycle’ means all consecutive and/or interlinked stages, including research and development to be carried out, production, trading and its conditions, transport, use and maintenance, throughout the existence of the product or the works or the provision of the service, from raw material acquisition or generation of resources to disposal, clearance and end of service or utilisation;

17. ‘design contests’ means those procedures which enable the contracting entity to acquire, mainly in the fields of town and country planning, architecture, engineering or data processing, a plan or design selected by a jury after being put out to competition with or without the award of prizes;

18. ‘innovation’ means the implementation of a new or significantly improved product, service or process, including but not limited to production, building or construction processes, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations, inter alia, with the purpose of helping to solve societal challenges or to support the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth;

19. ‘label’ means any document, certificate or attestation confirming that the works, products, services, processes or procedures in question meet certain requirements;

20. ‘label requirements’ means the requirements to be met by the works, products, services, processes or procedures in question in order to obtain the label concerned.