Sustainable Procurement: Environmental and Social Requirements

Introduction

Chapters 1 and 2 of Title II share a design choice that is easy to miss on a first read but shapes everything underneath it. Green public procurement and socially responsible public procurement are both defined, in near-identical language, as going beyond whatever environmental or labour law already applies. Mere compliance with existing Union law, national law, or the international conventions listed in the proposal's own annex is explicitly stated not to count as either¹. A buyer has to add something — a specification, an award criterion, a contract condition — that reaches past the legal floor before the label attaches. That is a meaningful line to draw in a regulation, because it turns "green" and "social" from a description of outcomes into a test of ambition.

Sustainability and Social Value Objectives

Green public procurement is tied to six environmental objectives: climate mitigation and emission reductions, climate resilience and adaptation, sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, the transition to a circular economy including the bioeconomy, pollution prevention, and the protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems¹. Socially responsible procurement runs to seven: labour market integration of disabled and disadvantaged people, high-quality jobs including recognition of collective bargaining, accessibility beyond the legal minimum, training and upskilling of workers on the contract, gender equality and non-discrimination, the social economy and social or affordable housing, and human rights protection across the relevant supply chain¹. Both lists can be built into specifications, award criteria, contract-performance conditions or, where genuinely relevant to the subject-matter, selection criteria. Neither…