Parents in European School pay overpriced disorganised trips for their kids.
It works as follows: the school organises a trip (for instance, a visit to a museum or to a farm) with pedagogical goals. Most often, the teachers are those arranging all the practical details, choosing the place, the best choices for tickets, the activities and hours…
The file is sent to a travel agency that holds the monopoly so that they buy the tickets and arrange transport and, when needed, accommodation. More often than not, the agency acts slowly so that by the time they buy the whole trip is more expensive than at the time the teachers planned it. 

If parents are lucky, the trip is organised at double the price that anybody would reasonably pay. According to the contract, the agency should provide a breakdown of prices, but this is not provided. Only after a year of complains by parents, the breakdown of prices started to be shared. Parents can’t even dream of checking the contract, it is confidential for “third parties” (parent are the mere third party that pays). 

If teachers are lucky, the agency will organise the trip as they planned. However, it should not be a surprise that the kids are hosted in a different building than the teachers, or that teachers have to organise a dinner for 50 people because the agency didn’t consider this important. 

Not happy about it? Calm down and take it easy. No way to complain, the monopoly has all the rights, parents have all the obligations.  

This is not the first framework contract that is a total fiasco. The previous one was discontinued because of similar problems. 

How is this possible? 

When we started researching this absurdity, we were told that the Court of Auditors had imposed the use of European Public Procurement rules on European Schools, because they manage EU funds (at the end of the day, the biggest donor to European Schools is the Commission). The Secretary-General of the European Schools had therefore launched a call for tenders fully involving parents to provide a framework contract for all European Schools taking into account parents’ interests. 

After asking some questions, reading the actual opinion of the Court of Auditors and other related documents, we came to the conclusion that the whole schema was based on fiction, legend and bad management. 

We’ll explain it in 3 steps: 

1. It is not true that the European Court of Auditors imposes the use of European Public Procurement rules. 
2. It is not true that a framework contract is necessary. 
3. It is not true that the contract was made according to parents’ interests. 

Let’s see the details: 

1. The European Court of Auditors does not impose anything on services paid with parents’ money. 

European Schools are not an EU institution and do not follow EU rules, they are ruled by their own intergovernmental treaty. 

While it is true that part of the funds they manage come from the EU (and therefore the EU can impose rules on how to spend that money), parent’s money is purely private money. 

The European Court of Auditors clarifies the way to handle it in their non-mandatory opinion No 10/2020 on a proposal for amending the Financial Regulation applicable to the budget of the European Schools. 

Paragraphs 10, 11 and 12 of that non-mandatory opinion are the most relevant. They clarify that “Extra-budgetary activities are activities outside of the Schools’ core activities, such as school trips and outings, and the selling of schoolbooks and diaries. They are organised for the Schools under the responsibility of their directors, but paid for by pupils, parents or third parties. They require a high level of transparency due to the inherent risks associated with them” 

Nowhere in the opinion it is it said that public procurement rules have to be applied. The auditors simply (and wisely) state that “Revenue and expenditure relating to these activities should be recorded in extra budgetary accounts. In the Schools’ consolidated accounts for the 2019 financial year, extra-budgetary revenues came to around €9,4 million”. In plain words: the nearly 10 million euros that parents’ pay from their pockets must not be mixed with school money. This is exactly the contrary than managing this money as EU money. 

The opinion also suggests that “extra-budgetary activities would have to be defined in a memorandum from the Schools’ Secretary-General, considering the nature of those activities and the materiality of the amounts involved” 

Following the recommendation of the auditors, the Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools (OSG) drafted on 23 July 2020 memorandum 2020-07-M-3-en where we can read: “As the School uses private money for extra-budgetary activities, the rules of the FR [EU financial regulation] related to procurement are not applicable, nor is the DIRECTIVE 2014/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2014 on public procurement” 

To sum up: the auditors do not even hint that EU procurement rules have to be applied to parent’s money. Even if they mentioned it, their opinion would be non-mandatory.

2. There is no need for framework contract.

The same OSG memorandum states that “The School supported by the procurement cell of the OSGES shall conclude a framework contract with a travel agency to facilitate all school trips. For the tender, the School shall apply the provisions on procurement procedures stated in the FR [EU financial regulation]. The tender shall cover all regular school trips of four consecutive school years.” 

We cannot be more surprised that the OSG decided to apply rules that have just been mentioned as not applicable.  

One could concede that it was just to have the best standard possible (what can be better than EU procurement rules?). Even in this case, EU procurement rules allow for many options, such as framework contracts with reopening of competition, acquisition by catalogues, direct negotiation… There is no need to make the call so restrictive that only few companies apply. There is no obligation to sign a contract for 4 years. There is no obligation to have a monopoly in each country… 

By making these choices, the OSG maybe made its life easier (4 years without thinking of this any longer is an attractive argument) but crippled parents’ chances to have truly competitive offers. This was bad by design. 

To sum up: the OSG chose the most restrictive and least competitive kind of contract.

3. Parents’ interests were not taken into account.

One could imagine that the OSG did its best, but those irrational parents, often eurocrats, could not refrain from using all their EU knowledge to force the OSG to go for the least rational contractual option. Or, at least, parents could have changed the call specifications to improve them. 

At the end of the day, parents were fully involved in the implementation of the call, right? 

False. The design of the call was made in such a way that parents’ consultation could not lead to significative changes. What is the point of a consultation if parents’ opinions are not considered? What is the point of being consulted on the tenderers if there is only one offer? In general, parents who were “involved” were merely listened to. The OSG took all decisions. 

To sum up: parents’ involvement was merely formal, their interests were disregarded.

The way forward 

The new framework contracts were supposed to reduce burden to teachers and provide good prices for parents. None of these promises has become true. 

Not so long ago, teachers used to organise the trips themselves, asked for quotations from a few agencies and picked the best one. 

The teachers were doing the work, as it is the case today, but at least they had a proper service. 

If the old system was working fine, wouldn’t it be wise to come back to that model unless a better one is available? 

Generation 2004 believes that it is possible to define a contracting model for pupils’ trips that respects teachers, parents and pupils, but this requires a genuine consultation where the interested parties – at the very least, those who pay – are truly involved. 

If you are involved in the European Schools in any role, we’d be interested in listening your viewpoint, please do not hesitate to contact us.