Judgment_paragraph 41 · Commission of the European Communities v French Republic (C-337/98)

41In the present case, even though it is not clear from the documents before the Court that there was a formal decision by the contracting entity to proceed by way of negotiated procedure without a prior call for competition to award the contract at issue, it is important to bear in mind that, in its resolution of 19 July 1990, the Committee of Sitcar voted to ‘record that the design and execution of the “system and equipment linked to the system” will be the subject of a turnkey contract with Matra-Transport’. It is clear from that sentence that, by the date of that resolution at the latest, and thus well before the expiry of the period prescribed for transposition of Directive 93/38, the decision of the contracting entity to proceed by way of negotiated procedure without a prior call for competition had already been adopted.