European Union – Public procurement. The Court of Justice of the European Union gave a preliminary ruling, deciding, among other things, that the fundamental rules and general principles of the EC Treaty should be interpreted as not precluding a provision of national law under which a contracting authority could provide that a candidate or tenderer be automatically excluded from a tendering procedure relating to a public contract for not having lodged, with its tender, a written acceptance of the commitments and declarations contained in a legality protocol, such as that at issue in the main proceedings.