Article 51

Any procurement carried out by the Commission on its own behalf or jointly with Member States shall be subject to the rules on public procurement set out in Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 966/2012 and Regulation (EU) No 1268/2012. Union funding may take the form of pre-commercial procurement or the procurement of innovative solutions carried out by the Commission or the relevant funding body on its own behalf or jointly with contracting authorities from Member States and associated countries. The procurement procedures: shall comply with the principles of transparency, non-discrimination, equal treatment, sound financial management, proportionality, with competition rules and, where applicable, with Directives 2004/17/EC, 2004/18/EC and 2009/81/EC, or, where the Commission acts on its own behalf, with Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 966/2012; may provide for specific conditions such as the place of performance of the procured activities being limited for pre-commercial procurement, to the territory of the Member States and of countries associated to Horizon 2020 where duly justified by the objectives of the actions; may authorise the award of multiple contracts within the same procedure (multiple sourcing); shall provide for the award of the contracts to the tender(s) offering best value for money. Unless otherwise stipulated in the call for tenders, results generated by procurement carried out by the Commission shall be owned by the Union. Specific provisions regarding ownership, access rights and licensing shall be laid down in the contracts regarding pre-commercial procurement to ensure maximum uptake of the results and to avoid any unfair advantage. The contractor generating results in pre-commercial procurement shall own at least the attached intellectual property rights. The contracting authorities shall enjoy at least royalty-free access rights to the results for their own use and the right to grant, or require the participating contractors to grant, non-exclusive licences to third parties to exploit the results under fair and reasonable conditions without any right to sub-license. If a contractor fails to commercially exploit the results within a given period after the pre-commercial procurement as identified in the contract, it shall transfer any ownership of the results to the contracting authorities. Specific provisions regarding ownership, access rights and licensing may be laid down in the contracts regarding public procurement of innovative solutions to ensure maximum uptake of the results and to avoid any unfair advantage.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-11-04 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.