The Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) of the European Parliament requested a briefing on the subject of “The EU’s Public Procurement Framework – How is the EU’s Public Procurement Framework contributing to the achievement of the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the Circular Economy Strategy?”, in the context of the future Own-Initiative (INI) report entitled “Towards a more sustainable single market for businesses and consumers”
The report explored the reasons why public authorities have not sufficiently taken up the possibilities to use strategic public procurement to introduce sustainable, green, pre-procurement or innovation-focused tools despite the public procurement directives entered into force in 2014. Findings included that a voluntary approach is not sufficient and that clear Guidelines and tools are essential to provide legal certainty for public procurement officials. The European Commission has therefore a central role to play to provide guidelines and off-the-shelf solutions. Further action is needed to promote strategic public procurement and in particular Green Public Procurement requiring low carbon, life-cycle and circular approaches in public purchases, such as increasing the number of mandatory green procurement requirements. Member states also have a role to play by professionalising the public procurement authorities and establishing central purchasing bodies or national competence centres.
This project was awarded under the Framework Contract for External expertise on regulatory and policy issues in the fields of Internal Market (n IP/A/IMCO/FWC/2019-014/C1) with the European Parliament, IMCO. The full list of CEPS’ Framework Contracts is available here.