Judgment_paragraph 73 · Criminal proceedings against Marcello Costa and Ugo Cifone (C-72/10, C-77/10)

73In that context, the purpose underlying the principle of transparency, which is a corollary of the principle of equality, is essentially to ensure that any interested operator may take the decision to tender for contracts on the basis of all the relevant information and to preclude any risk of favouritism or arbitrariness on the part of the licensing authority. It implies that all the conditions and detailed rules of the award procedure must be drawn up in a clear, precise and unequivocal manner, to make it possible for all reasonably informed tenderers exercising ordinary care to understand their exact significance and interpret them in the same way, and to circumscribe the contracting authority’s discretion and enable it to ascertain effectively whether the tenders submitted satisfy the criteria applying to the relevant procedure (see, to that effect, Case C-496/99 P Commission v CAS Succhi di Frutta [2004] ECR I-3801, paragraph 111, and Case C-250/06 United Pan-Europe Communications Belgium and Others [2007] ECR I-11135, paragraphs 45 and 46).