Balearic Nautical Sector denounces irregularities in PortsIB mooring buoy tender

The Association of SMEs for Nautical Activities in the Balearic Islands (Apanib) has publicly denounced what it describes as a “flawed tender” maintained by PortsIB, accusing the authority of implementing a “covert shutdown” of the mooring buoy market in the archipelago.

In a statement released by Pimem, the business association warned that the tender promoted by the regional authority for the management of regulated mooring fields has once again become “the centre of controversy” following a recent ruling by the Central Administrative Court for Contractual Appeals.

The court upheld the appeal filed by Apanib against the tender specifications and declared the existence of “substantial defects” in their design. It ordered the inclusion of the technical project for the Formentor mooring field and annulled a clause that limited the number of lots a single bidder could apply for.

However, charter companies have expressed concern that, despite formally acknowledging that the procedure was “poorly structured,” PortsIB has lifted the suspension of the tender “without yet guaranteeing the actual implementation of those corrections or an effective restoration of publicity and competition.”

According to the sector, the result is a “paradoxical” situation: although Apanib’s claims have been upheld and the tender has been признed as “defective,” it is allowed to continue “without ensuring that it no longer produces the same restrictive effects.”

From a legal standpoint, the annulment of essential clauses and the introduction of new technical documentation are “not merely formal adjustments,” but rather changes that alter the economic and competitive conditions of the procedure.

Under European public procurement regulations, such changes should be accompanied by renewed public notice, allowing potential bidders to become aware of the new rules and compete on equal terms, the association has argued.

In practice, they criticise, the process has become a “two-speed procedure”: on the one hand, operators already participating in the tender can adapt their bids to the new conditions; on the other, companies that did not initially bid due to now-annulled restrictions remain effectively excluded from the process.

This imbalance, according to the business association, is “particularly serious” in the Balearic charter sector, given that access to mooring fields “is not an ancillary element of the business, but an essential resource for operating.”

Conditioning such access through a procedure acknowledged as “defective,” they warn, directly imposes a structural cost increase on companies and undermines their competitiveness.

Business associations stress that this is not merely a technical dispute over tender specifications, but a market issue involving the consolidation of a mooring allocation system “that favours certain operators and artificially raises costs for the rest of the sector.”

This creates the risk that, “under the appearance of formal legality,” a “regulatory barrier to entry with exclusionary effects for part of the industry” is being established.

Allowing the procedure to move forward without substantive correction and without renewed public notice, charter operators insist, turns the acceptance of the appeal into “an empty gesture” and leaves the economic effects of the original design untouched.

For this reason, companies in the sector are already considering filing a contentious-administrative appeal, including a request for interim measures, should PortsIB fail to guarantee a “complete and verifiable” correction of the procedure.

“What is at stake is not only the formal regularity of an administrative file, but access to an essential resource for economic activity and the preservation of an open and competitive market in one of the Balearic Islands’ strategic sectors,” they concluded.

According to information released last week by the Ministry of the Sea and the Water Cycle, the court has lifted the suspension of the procurement procedure for the management of regulated mooring fields in areas of the Balearic Islands’ Natura 2000 network.

The ruling, according to the regional government, allows the administrative processing of the procedure to continue in accordance with public procurement regulations, subject to the correction of certain formal aspects of the contractual process.

The lifting of the suspension removes the automatic halt triggered by the filing of the appeal and authorises PortsIB to proceed with the corresponding administrative steps, as the fundamental elements of the project remain in place.