Antitrust office head rejects Areva’s appeal

The head of the Czech antitrust office Petr Rafaj has rejected an appeal lodged by the French company Areva against its exclusion from a multi-billion crown tender on the completion of the Temelin nuclear power plant in south Bohemia. The decision confirms an earlier verdict made by the antitrust office. The Czech power utility ČEZ, which operates the plant, excluded Areva from the tender in October of last year, on the grounds that the submitted bid contained serious errors. Areva has filed several unsuccessful appeals against its exclusion. The bidders that remain in the running are the Czech-Russian consortium Mir 1200 and the US-Japanese company Westinghouse. ČEZ, which was expected to announce the winner of the tender in the autumn of this year, has said it would postpone the decision by at least a year.