Dear Sir/Madam,  Subject:  External quality assessment of molecular typing of Salmonella, STEC and Listeria  Ref.: OJ/2021/DPR/23656 ECDC is planning to award the contract(s) resulting from the above procurement procedure. The procurement  documents consist in the contract notice, this invitation letter, the draft contract(s) and the tender specifications  with their respective annexes. All documents are available at the TED e-Tendering website$^{1}$ (see specific link in the  contract notice): https://e-Tendering.ted.europa.eu  Economic operators interested in this contract are invited to submit a tender in one of the official languages of  the European Union.  Tenders must be submitted exclusively via the electronic submission system (e-Submission) available from the  above website$^{2 }$and accessible on the Funding and Tenders Opportunities portal (F&T portal)$^{3}$. Tenders submitted  in any other way (e.g. e-mail or by letter) will be disregarded.  Make sure you submit your tender on time:  you are advised to start completing your tender early. To avoid any  complications with regard to late receipt/non receipt of tenders within the deadline, please ensure that you submit  your tender several hours before the deadline. A tender received after the deadline indicated in the procurement  documents will be rejected. IMPORTANT:  In case of discrepancy between the total reference price indicated in the financial tender in annex II  and the price encoded in the e-Submission application, the price mentioned in annex II shall prevail.  1 Subscription to the call for tender at the above link allows interested economic operators to receive e-mail notifications when new  information or documents are published. Subscription is free of charge and does not involve any commitment to submit a tender. $^{2}$ For detailed instructions on how to submit a tender please consult the e-Submission Quick Guide available at:  https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/digit/opsys/esubmission/assets/documents/manual/quickGuide_en.pdf. The supported browsers, file types,  size of attachments and other system requirements can be consulted at: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/wikis/x/f6dqEg. In case of  technical problems, please contact the e-Submission Helpdesk (see contact details in the e-Submission Quick Guide) as soon as possible.  $^{3}$ https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/home  Page  1  of  4 Stockholm,  1. Submission of tenders In order to submit a tender using e-Submission, economic operators (each member of the group in the case of a  joint  tender)  will  need  to  register  in  the  European  Commission's Participant  Register  (http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/home.html) - an online register of organisations  participating in EU calls for tenders or proposals. On registering each organisation obtains a Participant  Identification Code (PIC, 9-digit number) which acts as its unique identifier in the above register. Instructions on  how  to  create  a  PIC  can  be  found  on  this  page:  https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/wikis/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=308979301.  Economic  operators  already registered in the Participant Register shall reuse their existing PICs when preparing tenders in e-Submission.  IMPORTANT:  In case of any problems with the submission of your electronic tender, you  must contact the Support  team in reasonable time before the time limit for receipt (see Quick Guide for Economic Operators:  https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/digit/opsys/esubmission/assets/documents/manual/quickGuide_en.pdf). 