Consultation Workshop on Legal Provisions on Sustainable Public Procurement

The meeting took place virtually via the Zoom platform on 18 May 2021, 11:00 – 12:30 (Tbilisi time).

Meeting objectives were to:

  • present and discuss the SPP related articles and provisions to the new draft law “On Public Procurement”, as well as the by-laws on SPP;
  • present the achievements and plans for implementing SPP principles and regulations in the context of the newly developed draft law “On Public Procurement”;
  • raise awareness among public officials, civil society activists and academia on the SPP concept/approach and benefits;
  • discuss new opportunities related to SPP in Georgia: priority products and services that have a high potential of sustainability to be further identified for the SPP pilot tenders.

Participants

The meeting gathered up to 30 officials and participants from the Parliament, Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia, the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, Environmental Information and Education Centre, State Procurement Agency, Dispute Resolution Council, Energy Efficiency Centre, as well as other Ministries, contracting authorities, CSOs experts and academia professionals.

Background

In 2014, Georgia signed an Association Agreement with the EU. One of the articles of the Association Agreement refers to a need in introducing Sustainable Public Procurement (hereinafter – SPP) principles. SPP is considered the process by which public authorities seek to achieve the appropriate balance between the three pillars of sustainable development – economic, social, and environmental – when procuring goods, services, or works at all stages of the project. Since the SPP concept is a completely new approach to Georgian legislation, there was a need for a full roll-out of the SPP approach, including policy development, capacity building and SPP implementation, in Georgia for the uptake of SPP by the government.

UNEP in close cooperation with the Environmental Information and Education Centre (EIEC) in Georgia and the State Procurement Agency of Georgia implements a set of the activities on promotion and application of SPP, including improving the legislation to introduce the SPP provisions. In the framework of the UNEP-EIEC contract on implementation of the EU4Environment project in Georgia, the Activity 1.4 envisages organizing a consultation workshop on legal provisions on SPP of the new draft law “On Public Procurement” and the relevant draft bylaw in order to present these documents to the Georgian authorities, increase their awareness on SPP benefits and explain how these changes in legislation will help to implement SPP on practice. SPP related articles, provisions to the new draft law “On Public Procurement”, as well as the by-laws were elaborated with support of EU4Environment project.

Meeting documents

Agenda

Newsletter

Keep up to date with our latest news, reports and analysis by subscribing to our monthly newsletter.

Subscribe