Ecological criteria when awarding a public procurement contract
In the past, EU and national policy makers have treated environmental issues as just another ??sector? that could be managed in isolation of other policy domains. The
non-integration of environmental considerations within the sectoral planning and
decision-making processes imposed considerable economic and environmental costs.
This thesis is regarding environmental criteria that a public authority can take into account when awarding procurement contracts. After the Commission??s Green Paper on Public Procurement, published in 1996, a hot debate has started regarding how environmental criteria may be taken into account at each stage of the contract award procedure.
The challenge is to combine economic growth with environmental protection requirements in a way that is sustainable in the long run. Public authorities can make use of public procurement in order to sustain environmental purchasing by using ecological criteria during the procurement process. The criteria set up in the procurement process can be used as a tool by the Member States in order to reach a more efficient and sustainable development. Since environment policy is a EU concern, this aspect is even more important with the enlargement, when ten new Member States join the EU this year. The public procurement can be used as a tool even in the new Member States in order to adopt a more proactive approach towards an efficient environmental policy.
At a global level, the WTO Agreement on Public procurement has been concluded by the European Council on behalf of the European Community. The aim of the Agreement on Public Procurement is to establish a multilateral framework of balanced rights and obligations relating to public contracts with a view to achieving the liberalisation and expansion of world trade.
The EU legislation complies with the provisions of the GPA Agreement. In the new directives on public procurement the environmental criteria have been given an important role and had been better clarified. They are now especially enumerated within the criteria which the contracting authority can set up in order to assess the most economically advantageous tender. These criteria have to fulfil certain conditions set up by the case law.
The economic assessment of the environmental criteria is depending entirely on the ??subjective? evaluation of the contracting authority (the purchaser). It should be important, in this context, to provide harmonized guidelines specially regarding environmental criteria with a national, regional or global impact.
The harmonisation of environmental requirements within the Internal Market can contribute to the achievement of Community goals of a sustainable development and environment protection. However, the aim of harmonisation on a Community level should not have a completely covering character, but rather to create conditions to individual adaptation as economic operator in relation to the environmental impact.
If environmental criteria are applied by public organs on a larger scale and are given more weight when awarding public contracts, then the economic operators will adjust their own activity by developing a more environmentally friendly production in order to compete. The concept of competition incorporates the wish to fight and to come first. In the long run this would lead to more envi...
