Europol Public Information  ‘eTendering’  means the platform used by Europol for managing calls for tenders 6 . The platform is  an extension of TED which consists of the publication of procurement documents and the  management of questions and answers. In some of the procurement procedures, the electronic  submission system (eSubmission) is integrated in eTendering.  ‘Invitation’  refers to the ‘Invitation to tender & tender specifications’ including its annexes and, if  applicable, also to ‘Invitation to Step II’ including its annexes.  ‘Procurement documents’ mean any document produced or referred to by the contracting  authority to describe or determine elements of the procurement procedure, including: the  publicity measures (e.g. contract notice, corrigenda); the invitation to tender; the tender  specifications, including technical specifications and the relevant criteria, or the descriptive  documents in the case of a competitive dialogue; the draft contract.  ‘Subcontracting’ , in this context, is the situation where a contract has been or is to be established  between the contracting authority and a contractor only and where the contractor or  candidate/tenderer, in order to carry out that contract, enters into legal commitments with other  entities for performing parts of the contract. The contracting authority has no direct legal  commitment with the subcontractor(s). In practice, any third party involved in the contract  implementation which has no legal link with the contracting authority but with the contractor will  be considered as subcontractor (e.g. any other company which does not participate in the  contract execution but provides financial capacity).  ‘TED’  means Tenders Electronic Daily database ( http://ted.europa.eu), where all contract notices  published in the Official Journal ‘’S’’ series (OJ S) are available.  ‘Tenderer’ means an economic operator that has submitted a tender (whether in a one-step  procedure or in Step II of a two-step procedure). ‘Tenders’  submitted in the context of a procurement procedure are also designated ‘ offers ’.  Requests to participate/tenders shall be submitted strictly in accordance with the conditions set  out in the procurement documents. If any other conditions are attached to or referred to in the  request to participate/tender, the candidate/tenderer should declare that such conditions are  entirely withdrawn. The period of validity of the tender, during which the tenderer may not modify the terms of the  tender in any respect, must be at least six months following the time limit for receipt of tenders.  The  successful tenderer  must maintain its offer for a further four months from the date of the  written notification of Europol’s intention to award it the contract.  Europol reserves the right to decline without further comment any proposal that does not accept  its draft contract.  The submitted tender is binding on the tenderer to whom the contract is awarded for the  duration of the contract.  All costs incurred for the preparation and submission of tenders are to be borne by the tenderers  and will not be reimbursed.  6  https://etendering.ted.europa.eu/general/page.html?name=home&locale=en.  General Guidance on Europol Procurement Procedures  Page  6  of  20 1.3. Implications of submitting a request to participate/tender 