1. General Principles
1. General Principles
Where implementation of the Programme/project requires the award of a procurement contract by beneficiaries established in the Russian Federation, which are private entities, the following principles shall be complied with:
(a) The contract shall be awarded to the tender offering best value for money, or as appropriate, to the tender offering the lowest price, while avoiding any conflict of interests;
(b) For contracts with a value of more than EUR 60 000, the following rules shall also apply:
(i) an evaluation committee shall be set up to evaluate applications and/or tenders on the basis of the exclusion, selection and award criteria published by the beneficiary in advance in the tender documents. The committee must have an odd number of members with all the technical and administrative capacities necessary to give an informed opinion on the tenders/applications;
(ii) sufficient transparency, fair competition and adequate ex-ante publicity must be ensured;
(iii) equal treatment, proportionality and non-discrimination shall be ensured;
(iv) tender documents must be drafted according to best international practice;
(v) deadlines for submitting applications or tenders must be long enough to give interested parties a reasonable period to prepare their tenders;
(vi) candidates or tenderers shall be excluded from participating in a procurement procedure if they fall within one of the situations described in paragraph 2.2 of Article 2 of this Annex. Candidates or tenderers must certify that they are not in one of these situations. In addition, contracts may not be awarded to candidates or tenderers which, during the procurement procedure fall within one of the situations referred to in paragraph 2.3 of Article 2 of this Annex;
(vii) procurement procedures set out in Article 3 of this Annex shall be followed.