Naval Group Submarine Win Contested by Thyssenkrupp

Thyssenkrupp appealed against a decision by the Netherlands last month to award a contract worth billions of euros to build submarines to France's Naval Group, the German company said.

Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), the German conglomerate's defence division, filed the objection with the District Court in The Hague in late March, the company said in an e-mailed statement.

"This measure is a professional business procedure in such publicly tendered major projects and part of the competition - especially in light of the questions that remain unanswered regarding specific evaluation criteria," TKMS said.

It said it would take time for the Dutch procurement authority and the Ministry of Defence to answer these questions that TKMS said were relevant to the overall evaluation of the award decision. It did not specify any of the criteria.

The agreement to award the contract to Naval Group still has to be approved by Dutch parliament, where several parties voiced discontent over the choice of the French group.

Some lawmakers have urged the government to opt for a consortium of Swedish defence company Saab and Dutch shipbuilder Damen, which was the third bidding group for the contract, saying that would benefit domestic industry more.

(Reuters reporting by Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff; Editing by Miranda Murray and Barbara Lewis)