Sustainable Public Procurement Under Eu Law New Perspectives On The State As Stakeholder

This book evaluates the 2014 EU public procurement law reform from a sustainability perspective.

This book evaluates the 2014 EU public procurement law reform from a sustainability perspective.

This book provides the first comprehensive appraisal of the paradigm shift towards mandatory sustainability requirements in EU public procurement law. Traditionally, EU public procurement law focused on 'how to buy', dictating procedural rules so that public buyers in the Member States did not discriminate against suppliers and service providers from other Member States. Mandatory green and social requirements mean that, with a view to achieving sustainable development goals and mitigating climate change, the EU will limit this discretionary power for public buyers, pushing them to acquire more sustainable goods and services. Based on legal analysis informed by economic perspectives, the book aims to contribute to an understanding and critical discussion of the EU legislator's move towards regulating 'what to buy'. The book discusses the role of the Public Procurement Directives in relation to this paradigm shift, as well as various other sectoral legislative instruments that have been revamped or newly introduced in light of the European Green Deal. The paradigm shift is analysed from different perspectives, including subsidiarity, alternative regulation, economics and public purchasing. The book includes novel sectoral studies on transport, food, clothing, and construction, discussing how change is taking place and what its major challenges are for the future. Chapters on Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and more, offer case studies of Member States that have already introduced mandatory requirements and highlight lessons learnt. This is an essential book for professionals working with public procurement law in academia and practice, and to those engaged in achieving public policy objectives in light of climate change and social injustice.

This book investigates the strategic use of public procurement as a way to establish “buying green” as a common practice – not only in the EU, but all over the world. However, imposing environmental requirements may affect the conditions of competition between suppliers, especially between local and foreign ones. This is particularly relevant for signatory states to the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), a plurilateral WTO agreement that aims at liberalizing public procurement markets. So how can these countries strike a balance between trade concerns and using the environmental potential of public procurement? What scope does the GPA 2012 leave for environmental criteria and how are signatory states making use of it? The need for answers to these questions is becoming even more pressing with the increasing use of green public procurement (GPP). This book discusses approaches to finding legal solutions to this question, using a multilayered approach to do so: In a first step, an analysis of the pertinent GPA provisions serves to delineate the scope for GPP under WTO law. In a second step, an evaluation of the implementation of the respective provision at the regional and national level by the EU and Switzerland helps reveal the impact of the GPA on its signatory states. While the book chiefly focuses on the legal framework for GPP, it also takes into account the latest developments in jurisprudence and policy initiatives. It concludes by proposing practical solutions regarding the specific design of GPP policies and measures in compliance with the GPA. The comparative approach applied in the book, focusing on the implementation of the WTO/GPA by two selected signatories, makes it an informative and insightful resource for practitioners, policymakers and legal scholars from all GPA signatory countries, extending its relevance beyond the selected examples (the EU and Switzerland).

This book investigates patterns of fragmentation and coherence in the international regulatory architecture of public procurement. In the context of the major international instruments of procurement regulation, the book studies the achievement of social and labour policies, the most controversial and problematic instrumental uses of public procurement practices. This work offers an innovative comparative approach, discussing the ways in which the different international instruments-namely the EU Procurement Directives, the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement, the UNCITRAL Model Law and the World Bank's Procurement Framework-are able to implement labour and social purposes and, at the same time, ensure a regulatory balance with the principles of efficiency and non-discrimination. Scholarly, rigorous and timely, this will be important reading for international trade lawyers and procurement practitioners.

The low-carbon transition is ongoing everywhere. This Handbook, written by a group of senior and junior scholars from six continents and nineteen countries, explores the legal pathways of decarbonisation in the energy sector. What emerges is a composite picture. There are many roadblocks, but also a lot of legal innovation. The volume distils the legal knowledge which should help move forward the transition. Questions addressed include the differences between the decarbonization strategies of developed and developing countries, the pace of the transition, the management of multi-level governance systems, the pros and cons of different policy instruments, the planning of low-carbon infrastructures, the roles and meanings of energy justice. The Handbook can be drawn upon by legal scholars to compare decarbonisation pathways in several jurisdictions. Non-legal scholars can find information to be included in transition theories and decarbonization scenarios. Policymakers can discover contextual factors that should be taken into account when deciding how to support the transition.

The book examines how the interests of the member states, which provide the primary driving force for developments in European integration, are internalised and addressed by the law of the European Union. In this context, member state interests are taken to mean the policy considerations, economic calculations, local socio-cultural factors, and the raw expressions of political will which shape EU policies and determine member state responses to the obligations arising from those policies. The book primarily explores the junctions and disjunctions between member state interests defined in such a manner and EU law, where the latter expresses either an obligation for the member states to comply with common policies or an acceptance of member state particularism under the common EU framework.

The EU public procurement regime has recently undergone an overhaul and now allows Member States and their contracting authorities to pursue strategic goals via public procurement, including environmental and social objectives. The extent to which such interests may be accommodated in the procurement process is ultimately determined by the broader legal context in which the EU public procurement regime exists, which raises pressing questions regarding the scope and limits of Member States' discretion. This volume scrutinises these new legal acts – particularly Directive 2014/24/EU – focusing on discretion and engaging with questions central to the public procurement regime against the EU legal backdrop, including internal market law and environment law, as well as law beyond the EU.