You have first to determine if you have your technological and/or industrial base in one of the EDA subscribing Member States (sMS) to the Code of Conduct on Defence Procurement.
 
If yes, you are entitled to a fair and equal treatment by the contracting authority which issued the notice.  

If no, it will be a matter for the contracting authority to decide to accept or not your involvement in the competition and the associated conditions.

None of them have nor intend to have any legal scope.
 

Offsets are compensations (return on investment) required by governments for off-the-shelf national procurement of defence equipments from foreign contractors.

They can be requested either under the form of a framework agreement, separate from the purchased contract, or under the form of a clause included in the contract itself.

In any case it is a commercial obligation requested by the buyer, not related to the subject of the contract.

They are to be distinguished from juste retour obligations or global balance arrangements[1].

They can be of three types:

- direct offsets: the supplier allocates parts of the development and/or production of the purchased equipment to local industries,[2]

- indirect defence related offsets: the supplier commits himself to invest in local defence firms and/or pass contract to local industries for defence projects not related to the purchased equipment,[3]

- indirect non-defence related offsets: the supplier commits himself to ensure investments and/or contracts for local civil commercial industries not related to the purchased equipment.

When the contract is subject to offset arrangements, information is displayed in the Contract Notice (selection and award criteria types).

While technically speaking based on the same technology and data base, these three applications are customized to their specific users:

- The EBB Extranet is used by the sMS Contracting Authorities’ administrators to post notices;

- The EBB Intranet is used by the EDA EBB Team to validate notices, manage the EBB Extranet and Web and collect data for the Reporting & Monitoring of the CoC;

- The EBB Web is used by the suppliers to search for contracting opportunities.

• procurements done under EC public procurement directives (published under TED)
• procurement under the threshold of € 1 M (ones below published on voluntary basis)
• cooperative programs
• R&T
• procurements of nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion systems, chemical, bacteriological and radiological goods and services, and cryptographic equipments

• pressing operational urgency
• for follow-on work or supplementary goods and services
• for extraordinary and compelling reasons of national security
• prior Contract Notice without suitable tenders

EBB, the Electronic Bulleting Board operated by the Agency, is an important tool of the Code of Conduct that will allow for transparency and fair and equal opportunities to the suppliers as well as a mean for the Agency to monitor its application.

  The EBB main objectives are: 
  
        •  To advertise sMS alll relevant new defence procurement opportunities which fall under the CoC 
        •  To assist suppliers in finding contracting opportunities and procurement details from sMS 
        •  To help EDA in the Reporting & Monitoring of the CoC (note that not all data collected from sMS through EBB will be published)

What is the CPV code?

The CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) code is a tool that allows potential suppliers and the awarding authorities to identify the subject of the contract more easily. For further information, see http://simap.europa.eu/codes-and-nomenclatures/codes-cpv_en.html

CPV codes adopted on 28 November 2007 by the Commission are compulsory when filling in the EBB templates starting 15 September 2008. One can search for the contracts using the new CPV codes for government contracts, as well as set up alerts and save queries for government contracts.

Note that these CPV codes are the ones adopted in 2007. To access correspondence tables between CPV 2007 and 2003, see: http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/publicprocurement/e-procurement_en.htm#cpv

As the logic of the CPV 2007 is different from that of the CPV 2003 (more 'product driven' and less 'material driven'), the correspondence between the two versions is multiple and ambiguous in some cases. Therefore, when searching for notices published before 15 September 2008, you might obtain some unexpected results after this date.

When you search by CPV code, you can choose either from the limited list of frequently used CPV codes, which are mostly related to defence procurements, which is pre-defaulted by the system:

 

  or from the wild list of business sectors including all the CPVs (delete tick the limited list field)



There is also a possibility to introduce the number of CPV directly into the field or browse by the sector.

For those potential suppliers unfamiliar with the procedures of sMS, the EBB Web contains details of each sMS’ national defence procurement authorities and tendering/contracting procedures.

As the EBB Web is for information purpose only, without any legal scope, the EDA will not intervene in any national procurement procedures. These are the sole responsibility of the contracting authorities within the respective sMS.

I any case, the EDA will not be in a position to provide the company with information and if a claim is received by the Agency, the EDA will forward it to the contracting authorities indicated in the notices.

In order to join the EBB Industry Contracts platfom you need to fill in the Code of Best Practices in the Supply Chain (CoBPSC) Central Administrator (CA) Designation form for your company. For any further information concerning the designation form and joining the Buying community, please contact the support team at cobpsc-support@eda.europa.eu

Once the CA form has been filled-in, signed and returned by fax to EDA, the EBB team will evaluate your request for eligibility, consistency and validity of the information and will accodingly activate your account in the system (EDA holds the right to deny access to a company to participate as a Buying organization in the system). Through this account you will be able to publish your contract notices:

    - create your company structure and designated administrators through the CA
    - designated administrators fill in the contract notice information
    - contract notice is submitted and reviewed by the EBB team 
    - contract notice is immediately published upon approval


For a better understanding of the CAs role, and of the system as a whole, you should access the User Guide explaining the functions and key principles of the system (http://www.eda.europa.eu/sEBBUtils/downloadfile.aspx?FileID=3).

The above described process is very efficient and takes place online interactively between the two parties, unless there are issues like incomplete data, inconsistent dates etc, in which case a notice might have to be revised.

Your company has the option for each published notice to go through the different stages of its life-cycle, namely: SPIN (Prior Information Notice - optional) - SCN (Contract Notice) and SCAN (Contract Award Notice). The user can easily move from a SPIN to an SCN and from an SCN to a SCAN by using the relevant templates, with no need to delete the previous phase. This is also interesting for the suppliers, that can see the various phases in their logical sequence. 

It is a voluntary Code of Best Practice in the Supply Chain (hereinafter referred to as the “CoBPSC”) for use where Article 296 of the TEC is invoked and the voluntary regime applies (other than for excepted goods and services); it is to be read and implemented coherently with the Code of Conduct, of which the CoBPSC is an integral part.

• The CoBPSC is to be complementary to national procedures with such procedures taking precedence where they exist. No legal commitment is involved or implied nor is there a transfer of risk involved or implied by the CoBPSC.
• The CoBPSC is established to promote the principles of the Code of Conduct on Defence Procurement in the supply chain thereby encouraging increased competition and fair opportunities for all suppliers, including for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
• The CoBPSC should encourage value to flow up the supply chain to the benefit of the sMS by adopting good practice down the supply chain. Over time the scope of the CoBPSC may be broadened to encompass all public defence procurements undertaken by sMS.

For more details for the CoBPSC, please Click here