Article 158. Negotiated procedure without publication of a notice.

1. Contracting authorities or granting bodies may award public contracts through a negotiated procedure without publication of a tender notice when the conditions set out in paragraph 2 are met, giving reasoned account thereof in the first act of the procedure in relation to the specific factual situation and the characteristics of the markets potentially affected and the dynamics that characterize them, and in compliance with the principles referred to in articles 1, 2 and 3. For these purposes, the results of any market consultations carried out, also aimed at analyzing the European markets, are taken into account or , if applicable, non-European. 2. Contracting authorities or granting bodies may resort to a negotiated procedure without a call for tenders in the following cases: a) when, in response to a procedure with publication of a notice, no no offer or any appropriate offer, nor any request to participate or any appropriate request to participate, provided that the initial conditions of the procurement are not substantially changed; an offer is not considered appropriate when it has no relevance to the contract and is therefore inadequate, unless substantially modified, to meet the needs of the contracting authority or granting body and the requirements specified in the tender documents; a request for participation is not considered appropriate when the economic operator concerned must or may be excluded or does not meet the selection criteria established by the contracting authority or the granting body pursuant to articles 95, 96 and 169, paragraph 2; b ) when a contract is intended only for research, experimentation, study or development purposes and not to make profitable or recover research and development expenses, provided that the award of the contract does not prejudice the calling for tenders for contracts subsequent ones which pursue, in particular, these objectives; c) when the works, services or supplies can be supplied only by a specific economic operator for one of the following reasons: 1) the purpose of the contract consists in the creation or acquisition of a unique work of art or artistic representation; 2) competition is absent for technical reasons. The exception set out in this number applies only when no reasonable substitutes or alternatives exist and the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial limitation of the contract parameters; 3) the protection of exclusive rights, including rights of intellectual property; the exception referred to in this number applies only when there are no reasonable substitutes or alternatives and the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial limitation of the parameters of the contract; d) to the extent strictly necessary when, for reasons of extreme urgency resulting from unforeseeable events by the contracting authority or the granting body, the deadlines established for open procedures, restricted procedures or negotiated procedures preceded by a call for tenders cannot be respected; the circumstances invoked to justify extreme urgency must in no case be attributable to the contracting authority or the granting body; e) in the case of supply contracts for complementary deliveries carried out by the original supplier and intended for the partial renewal of supplies or systems or the expansion of existing supplies or systems, if the change of supplier obliges the contracting authority or the granting body to purchase supplies with different technical characteristics, the use or maintenance of which would lead to incompatibility or disproportionate technical difficulties; f) for new works or services consisting in the repetition of similar works or services assigned to the operator to which the same contracting authorities or granting bodies have assigned a previous contract, provided that such works or services comply with a tender-based project and that this project has been the subject of an initial contract awarded according to a procedure referred to in article 155, paragraph 1; the tender project indicates the extent of any additional works or services and the conditions under which they will be awarded; the possibility of resorting to this procedure is indicated already at the time of calling the tender for the first project and the contracting authorities or granting bodies, when applying article 14, take into account the overall estimated cost for the subsequent works or services; g) for supplies quoted and purchased on the raw materials market; h) for opportunity purchases, when it is possible, in the presence of a particularly advantageous but short-lived opportunity, to purchase supplies whose price is significantly lower than prices normally charged on the market; i) for the purchase of supplies or services on particularly advantageous conditions from a supplier who definitively ceases commercial activity or from the liquidator in the event of insolvency proceedings, an agreement with creditors or similar procedures; l) when the service contract follows a design competition organized in accordance with the provisions of the code and is intended, based on the rules established in the design competition, to be awarded to the winner or one of the winners of that competition ; in this case, all the winners of the design competition are invited to participate in the negotiations. 3. Where possible, the contracting authorities identify the economic operators to be consulted on the basis of information regarding the economic and financial qualification characteristics and the technical and professional qualifications deduced from the market, in compliance with the principles of transparency and competition, selecting at least three economic operators, if suitable subjects exist among that number. The contracting authority chooses the economic operator who has offered the most advantageous conditions, pursuant to article 108, after verifying possession of the participation requirements required for the awarding of contracts of equal amount through an open, restricted or competitive procedure with negotiation. EFFECTIVE FROM: July 1, 2023