National Plan on Green Public Procurement

National Plan on Green Public Procurement

Europe’s public authorities have the chance to leverage their purchasing power to choose environmentally friendly goods, services and works, they can make an important contribution to sustainable consumption and production, a process referred to as Green Public Procurement (GPP). The GPP instrument is recognized by the EU authorities as an integral part of national and regional innovation systems which can stimulate green innovation and contribute to the union’s climate targets underlined in the European Green Deal and the Fit for 55 initiatives

The Committee for Green Public Procurement is the entity in charge of the implementation of the National Plan on GPP for Greece. Its objectives include the introduction and establishment of a rudimentary level of green criteria in public procurement referring to products and services, the gradual increase of the share of GPP, the dissemination of knowledge pertaining to the environmental and social benefits stemming from GPP and the monitoring and updating the relevant targets

Following the directing from the European Commission (Buying Green), the Committee has established the quantitative targets for GPP in 15 specific categories of contracts associated with public authorities. The initial phase of the National Plan on GPP involved the distribution of a questionnaire on GPP to public authorities in Greece and the collection of the responses (February-May 2022)

ATHENA ​Research Center will provide with its technical expertise on the topic by undertaking statistical analysis based on the responses to the Committee’s GPP questionnaire and will contribute to the critical assessment and further monitoring of the National Plan on GPP. The ATHENA RC research team led by Prof. Phoebe Koundouri will use analytical tools to summarize the key findings from the 354 participating authorities, identify and measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and underscore the strengths and weaknesses of Greek public authorities with respect to the National Plan on GPP.

    More specifically, ATHENA RC will contribute to the project by:

• Organizing and “cleaning” the data from the Questionnaire distributed to the Authorities
• Providing nuanced statistical analysis on the implementation of the targets on GPP set by the Ministry of Development and Investments
• Identifying the structural underpinnings across authorities that explain the overall performance and the cross-sample heterogeneity vis-à-vis GPP
• Outlining policy recommendations for bolstering the share of GPP for the relevant authorities
• Provide with the necessary tools for monitoring the authorities’ trajectory towards the GPS goals earmarked by the National Plan