The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has clarified the technical form requirements in European public procurement law in a recent judgement (Ref.: C-534/23 P, C-539/23 P of 03.07.2025). According to this judgement, only those documents and records that have been uploaded in full and on time to the designated electronic submission system are valid in EU procurement procedures. Hyperlinks to external websites, for example, cannot be recognised as additional tender documents because they do not meet the strict form and integrity requirements. They are therefore disregarded under procurement law.

For the ECJ, it is of crucial importance that an electronically transmitted tender must be unalterable, complete and directly available in the system. Subsequent evaluation or consideration of linked content is excluded because such references can jeopardise data integrity and the equal treatment of bidders.

The decision affects not only bidders, who must upload their tender documents to the tendering platform in full and on time, but also contracting authorities. They may only consider the uploaded documents when evaluating tenders and may not use any external content.

These principles on data integrity and electronic submission are of fundamental importance for the entire EU public procurement law beyond the specific procedure and are also of high practical relevance for national procurement procedures. Bidders should review their internal processes for submitting tenders and ensure that all documents are uploaded to the designated platform in good time. Contracting authorities, in turn, should align their award procedures and evaluation processes with this strict line in order to avoid legal risks.