In 2025 the State Commission for Public Procurement Appeals received 1,535 complaints. That is a jump of more than 50 percent on previous years - in 2024 and 2023 it handled around a thousand cases, and in 2022 there were 837. In its own annual report, the Commission calls this percentage „incredible” and admits it has no concrete explanation for it.

No concrete explanation, but a culprit all the same. Lawyers, says the Commission, are „fishing in murky water”.

The „professional complainants”

According to the report, the rise is down to entities filing complaints about tender documentation with no real intention of taking part in the procedure. The aim, the Commission claims, is to collect legal representation costs if the complaint is upheld. The Commission also believes the fee for filing a complaint - between 50 and 200 euros, depending on the estimated value of the tender - is too low and should be raised.

The assumption is clear: too many people are complaining, and doing it for profit. The suggested solution is just as clear: make complaining more expensive.

The number that demolishes the story

Of the 1,535 complaints filed, 637 were upheld. Decided in the complainant's favour. Which means that in almost one in three cases, the company that complained was right.

Of 1,405 resolved cases, 637 were upheld, 475 rejected and 151 dismissed. If this were purely about lawyers fishing in murky water, the success rate would be marginal. A rate of around 45 percent upheld complaints among resolved cases does not say the companies are chancers. It says the tenders often really were not run properly.

That is the other, less comfortable half of the same statistic - and it did not make it into the report's conclusion.

What is deliberately missing

In its latest annual report, the Commission does not publish which state bodies attracted the most complaints in the conduct of public procurement.

This is data the Commission already holds. It does not require a new investigation, a new methodology or extra budget - you simply count it. Instead, what was published was an analysis of lawyers' motives.

So we know there are professional complainants. We do not know which institution loses complaints most often. One name is absent, the other is named by nickname.

Who ends up paying the bill

Each of these 1,535 cases means a halted or delayed procurement - computers, vehicles, medical equipment, construction work. Every delay is a cost that comes out of the same budget that funds the tender.

If the complaint fee is raised as the Commission proposes, fewer companies will complain. Among them will be some of the 637 that were right. That is not called reducing abuse - that is called making the right to object more expensive.