Selection criteria may only relate to the economic operators:

• suitability to pursue the professional activity,
• economic and financial standing, and
• technical and professional ability.

A contracting authority/entity may establish a prequalification system for procurements under the Utilities Procurement Act equalling or exceeding the EU threshold values. The prequalification system must be advertised along with inter alia, the criteria's to prequalify and access to the system and grounds for exclusion. The applicant has to provide proof that he possesses general technical knowledge, efficiency and reliability for a certain type of contract/performance. In this perspective, the economic operator has to submit all of the necessary documents to the competent prequalification authority. It must be possible to join the system at any time and an application must be administered within six month. The contracting authority/entity may chose to invite economic operators registered in the prequalification system to a procurement procedure, i.e. no public call for competition is mandatory.

No such list exists in Sweden. It is up to the contracting authority/entity to assess if there is ground for exclusion of bidderd in each and every individual procurement.

In order to prevent conflicts of interest, a company that was involved in the set-up of a procurement procedure (i.e. drafting of or advising on the specifications) can be excluded from said procedure pursuant to under the Public Procurement Act, the Utilities Procurement Act and the Concessions Procurement Act if the involvement of the company in the set-up has led to a competitive distortion that cannot be remediated by other, less incisive measures (e.g. longer deadlines to submit a bid). Although not specifically regulated in the Defense Procurement Act, the rule can be said to emanate from the general principal of equal treatment, and perhaps therefore also be applicable for defense procurements.

A bid may not only be submitted by a sole bidder but also by a group of bidders, however, paying attention to relevant competition law. The contracting authority/entity may require that the consortia of bidders compose a specific form of legal entity if this is a prerequisite to be able to perform under the contract.

Moreover, a bidder may refer to the economic, technical and professional abilities of other companies in its bid. In such case, the bidder must prove that it will have at its disposal the resources necessary for the execution of the contract by producing a commitment from the companies in question or in some other way.

This is not dealt with directly in the Acts, nor in jurisprudence from the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court. The question would most likely be determined by the question if the principle of equal-treatment would be upheld.

Please note that pursuant to the European Court of Justice case C‑396/14, MT Højgaard and Züblin, the contracting authorities may allow the bidder to submit a bid even if the original bidder consortium does not exist anymore. This decision has not been reflected by the national case law, yet.

There is no such limitation stated in the Acts. It also seems unlikely that it would be considered to emanate from the general procurement principles that a contracting authority/entity is required to reject bids from related bidders. Furthermore, there is no unambiguous jurisprudence on whether a contracting authority/entity can make such limitations in the procurement documents.

Note, however, that this may in practice be an issue from a competition law perspective as it may constitute unlawful collaboration between competitors. Collaboration between companies within the same economic entity falls outside the scope of the competition laws. It is however possible for two companies within the same concern to be regarded as operating on individual basis to such extent that they would be regarded as separate economic entities and thus collaboration between them, such as exchanging information on their respective bids, could be prohibited under competition law.

Neither the Acts nor the EU directives provide a general framework for dealing with bids from foreign companies. Bidders from other EU member states are however protected under the general procurement principle of non-discrimination. Furthermore it is prohibited under the EU directives to treat non-member states bound by the GPA and by the other international agreements by which EU is bound, less favorable in public procurements.

The EU-commission has presented a proposal for new for a new EU regulation "on the access of third-country goods and services to the Union's internal market in public procurement and procedures supporting negotiations on access of Union goods and services to the public procurement markets of third countries".

In the proposal it is suggested that it shall be possible to impose price adjustment measures against third countries which adopts or maintains restrictive and/or discriminatory procurement measures or practices against EU member states. The price adjustment measure is suggested to lead to a penalty of up to 20% to be calculated on the price of the bidders concerned.

Note also that it is quite common for contracting authority/entities to require that the bid is submitted in Swedish. the recently adopted new public procurement directives of the European Union 2 do not provide a general framework for dealing with bids containing foreign goods and services on the EU's public procurement market