The Council of State, with the sentence n. 365/2026, has put a definitive end to the complex legal matter relating to the contract for the restoration and building recovery of the prestigious Palace of the Stars of Milan. The Fifth Section rejected the appeal of the Temporary Consortium of Companies, the original winner of the tender, confirming the legitimacy of its exclusion from the tender due to an anomaly in the bid.
The context: a contract worth over 17 million euros
The dispute concerns the restricted procedure initiated by the Stelline Foundation for the awarding of an integrated contract. The scope of the contract included the development of the executive project and the execution of the restoration works for the portion of the Palazzo located on Corso Magenta, owned by the Stelline Foundation, and the adjoining hotel complex.
The heart of the dispute: the cost of labor
The core of the dispute concerned the verification of the anomaly in the offer submitted by the original successful tenderer in the procedure, with particular reference to the cost of labor and the number of workers that the competitor intended to employ for the execution of the contract: following the appeal presented in April 2024 by the second-ranked competitor and the annulment (both in the first and second instance) of the documents relating to the sub-procedure for the verification of the anomaly carried out against the successful economic operator, in January 2025 the contracting authority renewed the verification of the anomaly in the offer, according to the indications provided by the Council of State and, in full compliance with the adversarial procedure, finally judged the offer of the original successful tenderer to be fair. not appropriate due to issues related to the cost of labor and the number of workers employed, ordering his exclusion and the sliding of the ranking in favor of the competitor second in the ranking.
The appellant's thesis revolved around the existence of a material error in the indication of the average hourly cost of labor inserted by him in the analysis sheets of the unit prices used to justify the offer and its amendmentability by the Contracting Authority.
The decision: the error must be “ictu oculi”
The Council of State rejected this thesis, reiterating a fundamental principle in the field of public tenders: a material error in the offer can be rectified only if it is clearly recognizable (ictu oculi) from the context of the deed, without the need for complex investigations to reconstruct the offeror's intentions. These elements were not found in this case.
The judges emphasized that:
- the appellant had never reported the existence of this error during the verification sub-procedure, despite having been called upon on several occasions to provide clarifications;
- the correction cannot be based on supplementary or subsequent corrective declarations of the competitor, made during the trial, so as not to violate the principle of equal opportunities;
- using the average hourly cost of labor indicated by the competitor in its tender documents (the only one considered certain and coming from the bidder), the mathematical development of the overall cost of labor demonstrated that the company would carry out the order at a loss;
Conclusions
With this ruling, the Council of State reaffirms the responsibility of companies in drafting bid documents and subsequent supporting documents, limiting the possibility of subsequent corrections that could alter the outcome of the competition.
The contract for the restoration of one of Milan's iconic landmarks can now proceed quickly and without further uncertainty.
Content by the Lawyer. Giuseppina Incorvaia
