"Soooo... were there no penalties in the contract for not delivering on time?"
There probably are*. But just how is collecting a penalty bring you back the lost time? **
* I don't know the contracts, obviously. But I do know a thing or three about EU procurement rules. Penalties look pretty nice on paper. However, the bar for invoking them is surprisingly high. Formulating terms of tender is an art in itself and requires a lot of both technical and legal knowledge, including stuff that isn't yet defined in codes and current court rulings that haven't been incorporated in the rule book yet.
It boils down to this: if you really know enough about anything you want to procure in order to make the terms of tender and the resulting contract airtight, watertight, foolproof, etc. - then you know enough about the damn thing to make it yourself. From scratch.
** Cancel the contract? Sure. Don't collect €€€, and start the procurement process again. Yeah, that'll save time. And if it's something highly specialised you're after, end up with a couple of bids by the same handful of companies as in round one. Only higher this time. And maybe with the company you've fired as a (possibly hidden) subcontractor. And quite possible having to pay the company you've fired damages for lost profit because of something the terms of tender doesn't cover, bacause see above.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
