The Court of Justice of the European Union justifies the exclusion of the legal services from the scope of the Directive on Public Procurement.

The CJEU solves a preliminary ruling given in response to a request from the Constitutional Court of Belgium willing to clarify if the article 10, letters c and d, subsection i), ii) and v) of the Directive 2014/24/UE on public procurement is compatible with de principle of equality and subsidiarity and the articles 49 and 56 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), since legal services are excluded from the scope of this Directive.

The judgement refuses the statement that claims that the Directive jeopardizes the freedoms guaranteed by the TFEU when excluding the legal services contained in the aforementioned articles and, therefore, not forcing the State Members to submit them in the public procurement legislation. The Court considers that the relation intuitu personae and the confidentialitybetween lawyer and client are the objective features that define this kind of services, not being comparable to the others included in the scope of the Directive 2014/24 and, consequently, justifying its exclusion from the public procurement legislation.