Brussels, 18/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 15 January, the European Commission launched an automated online translation service for public procurement opinions published in Tenders Electronic Daily (TED), the Union's online daily for calls for tenders.
The service is available in 24 languages, explains the Commission. The latter seeks to facilitate SMEs' access to calls for tender in public procurement markets at a cross-border level. The service will also be available for third country submissions and which have established official commitments with the Union in international agreements when awarding public market contracts, such as the multilateral WTO agreement on public procurement and bilateral free trade agreements.
The question of translations is a recurrent subject in the area of internal market access and, for example, the context of the European patent. In this connection, the languages that have existed for the single patent were only available in English, French and German. This was decided on the basis of limiting submission costs and speeding up procedures but Italy and Spain were particularly angered by the decision (see EUROPE 11308). Since then, a compromise has been found and an automated translation system will be set up but it will not contain any legal value. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)