Judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C-415/23 P

PRESS RELEASE No 68/25 Luxembourg, 12 June 2025 Judgment of the Court in Case C-415/23 P | OHB System v Commission Galileo Programme: the judgment of the General Court dismissing OHB System’s action against the award of the contract for transition satellites is set aside The Court of Justice refers the case back to the General Court In May 2018, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched a call for tenders for the supply of transition satellites for the Galileo programme. 1 The European Commission acted as contracting authority in that procedure. 2 On the basis of the applications to participate received, the ESA selected three companies – OHB System (OHB), Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) and Thales Alenia Space Italia (TASI) – which were invited to submit their tenders. At the end of that procedure, the Commission decided, first, to award the contract to TASI and to ADS and, second, not to accept OHB’s tender, on the ground that it was not the most economically advantageous. OHB challenged those decisions before the General Court of the European Union. During the tendering procedure, that company had informed the Commission that its former Chief Operating Officer who, at the time, had had extensive access to the project data for OHB’s tender, had meanwhile joined ADS where he had been placed at the head of the department responsible for the tender submitted by ADS. Consequently, according to OHB, the sensitive information obtained by its former...