After almost two years of attempts by the company ranked second in a public procurement procedure for the energy renovation of a residential block in Dryanovo to overturn the result, the dispute has ended with a final ruling by Bulgaria’s Supreme Administrative Court (SAC).
The ruling, dated 23 June this year, confirms that the ranking carried out by the committee appointed by the mayor of Dryanovo Municipality was correct. The company that challenged the result was ordered to pay €5,000 in legal costs to the municipality.
This is the second time the case has reached the Supreme Administrative Court.
The first was in autumn 2025, when the court returned the case file for a new decision on the ranking of bidders and the selection of a contractor for the energy renovation of a multi-family residential building at 143 Shipka Street in Dryanovo.
At that time, the local administration was ordered to pay BGN 4,700 in legal costs to the company that had been eliminated from the procurement procedure.
The court had found deficiencies in the committee’s ranking report. After the bids were reassessed, however, the municipal committee confirmed the original ranking: the company that had come second remained second, while the original winner was again ranked first.
The minutes of the reassessment were more than 80 pages long.
The company that remained in second place did not accept the outcome, however, and the procedure went around again – first before the Commission for Protection of Competition, which upheld the municipality’s decision, and then before the Supreme Administrative Court, which this time upheld the competition authority’s ruling.
All of this would have been a positive conclusion to the dispute were it not for one important detail.
The renovation of the residential block is being financed under Bulgaria’s Recovery and Resilience Plan, and the works were supposed to be completed by 30 June 2026.
The court ruling has come just one week before the deadline for reporting completed work. That means Dryanovo Municipality has no realistic way of meeting the original timetable for the energy renovation project under its Recovery and Resilience Plan funding agreement.
Mayor Trifon Panchev is now expecting the funding for the building to be provided through the Bulgarian Development Bank.
A review by “Za Istinata” confirmed that in January this year, then Regional Development Minister Ivan Ivanov announced delays in the implementation of energy-efficiency measures in 177 buildings under Stage 1 of the Recovery and Resilience Plan.
The money for those projects, however, is not expected to be lost. Their management is being transferred administratively from the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works to the Bulgarian Development Bank.
The Dryanovo apartment block is among the affected projects, meaning that the municipality could still sign a contract with the selected contractor and proceed with the renovation.
