The exclusion of participants from the award procedure for reasons linked to competition distortion.

Bid-rigging is a real problem in the present socio-economic context, not only in Romania, but also in other European Union Member States. Thus, Directive 2014/24/EU on public procurement (transposed by Law nr. 98/2016) is issued from the EU legislator's effort to regulate, through public procurement legislation, the stringent problems regarding private corruption, problems that the Court of Justice of the European Union was concerned with. Thus, Directive 2014/14/EU incorporates the solutions of the European Court which has traced the principles for settling certain problems regarding public procurement and competition distortion by participants, solutions which should be respected also by the Romanian courts called upon to interpret and to apply Law nr. 98/2016 in a pan-European spirit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]