oh but you forgot the mandatory time before they even start considering the tender.

looking at average speed of bureaucracy in EU it will take roughly a year to set date for a meeting that will set the date for actual meeting which will decide if this will go forward or not....

(if you think i'm joking - i'm basing this on proposed EU initiative for nuclear power which started with setting a date of meeting to setup a meeting to draft an agenda)

Sir Humphrey ran that meeting if I recall correctly

The five stages of creative inertia: https://youtu.be/PcghKtd-yP0?t=23

100% - I wonder if this is partly by design.

I'm kind of thinking of Frank Herbert's BuSab here...