European Union – Public service contracts. The Court of Justice of the European Union gave a preliminary ruling, deciding, among other things, that EU law, in particular art 45(2) of Directive (EC) 2004/18, did not preclude national legislation, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, which required a contracting authority to assess, in accordance with the principle of proportionality, whether it was in fact appropriate to exclude from a public contract a tenderer which had been guilty of grave professional misconduct.