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Luca app: Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania bought an annual license
Photo: Rüdiger Wölk / imago images / Rüdiger Wölk
The higher regional court (OLG) Rostock has declared the purchase of the Luca app by the state government to be ineffective.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's only OLG decided on Thursday that the government violated competition law with its direct award in the spring of this year.
Before placing an order for an app that can be used to track corona infections, several offers should have been obtained.
Despite the time pressure during the pandemic, the state government should at least have weighed up the offer made by the manufacturers of the so-called Vida app that they had made of their own accord, according to the court.
The Vida app definitely offers services that the state government has named as award criteria.
According to the OLG, the Luca contract is invalid and the decision is final.
A request to be allowed to continue the contract has been rejected, it is said.
Cube Software- und Hotel Projektierungs GmbH from Austria had previously sued against the award - but unsuccessfully.
The company did not have a similar app, the higher regional court said a few weeks ago.
Therefore, she could "not complain about the award of the contract due to the lack of a real chance of being considered in the context of a public invitation to tender."
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania bought an annual license for the Luca system for contact tracking during the corona pandemic in March of this year, according to its own information for 440,000 euros.
According to a market research by the state administration, the Luca system was the only product that met the requirements, according to a similar OLG procedure in September.
After test phases in Schwerin and Rostock, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was the first federal state to use the Luca app.
A SPIEGEL research in August showed that numerous health authorities across Germany considered the app to be worthless as an instrument for fighting pandemics.
(Read more here.)
pbe / AFP