Sustainable public procurement and WTO government procurement agreement

Abstract

"Procurement is called sustainable when organisations put in place processes whereby they meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves ‘value for money on a whole life basis’ in terms of generating benefits not only to the organisation, but also to society and economy, whilst minimising damage to the environment." This definition given by the ILO International Training Center, Torino, raises the legal question whether and how far so-called ’secondary policies‘ can be integrated into the procurement process without impairing the liberalisation goal of the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). The notion of sustainability itself can be described as a policy coherence tool which has to be taken into account when looking for legal concepts, e.g. when discussing the restraints on Green Public Procurement. The brown bag seminar gives an overview of the categories of public procurement (technical specifications, selection criteria, award criteria) and the possibilities of implementing sustainability aspects within the concept of the GPA, including a glimpse of ECJ case law and the EU Procurement Directives, which according to their recitals should be compatible with the GPA.

Biography of the Speaker

Marc Steiner holds a Master of Law from the University of Basel and is admitted to the bar. He has demonstrated an expertise on Green Public Procurement in Switzerland (2006) and recently issued a short working paper on how to integrate social aspects into public procurement processes (2009). He was appointed as a Judge to the Swiss Federal Administrative Court in 2007 (2nd Division, primarily in charge of economic matters including public procurement and competition). His comparative approach has been particularly stimulated by two internships at the ECJ (1996 and 2008).