Information on GPP

For a society striving after sustainability, decreasing the environmental impact of both the commercial and public sector is of major importance. To a large degree, the environmental impact of companies and public authorities is determined by their purchasing behaviour.

Public authorities are major consumers in Europe, spending some 16% of the European Union’s gross domestic product. By using their purchasing power to opt for goods and services that also respect the environment, they can make an important contribution towards sustainable development.

Moreover, green purchasing behaviour of public authorities will provide an example to the commercial sector on how to implement environmental criteria in their own sourcing process.

Definition of GPP: “Green Public Procurement (GPP) is a process whereby public and semi-public authorities meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities by seeking and choosing outcomes and solutions that have a reduced impact on the environment throughout their whole life-cycle, as compared to comparable products/solutions. A procurement procedure will be considered as ‘green’ only if it has led to the purchase of a substantively ‘greener’ product and only if the environmental characteristics of this product go beyond what needs to be complied with on the basis of European or national environmental legislation.”

The European Commission is initiating activities to increase the level of GPP in all Member States. In 2004, this lead to the adoption by the Council and the European Parliament of two directives aimed at clarifying, simplifying and modernising existing European legislation on public procurement. By the end of 2006, 10 Member States had adopted draft national action plans and 10 more Member States were working towards it.

Seven EU Member States (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and UK) - known as the ‘Green-7’ - are currently implementing more elements of GPP than the other-20 Member States. This means that they consistently have more tenders with green criteria than the rest within the EU-25.

In its review of the Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) of June 2006, the European Council announced its ambition to have brought the average level of EU GPP up to the standard currently achieved by the best performing Member States by 2010. The SDS target calls for more robust GPP indicators, which allow the measurement of the GPP level in the best performing Member States in the reference year 2006. These indicators should also allow Member States to monitor the situation in their countries regularly and report to the European Commission.