Introduction

On the 24th of November, early-stage researcher Aura Iurascu represented the SAPIENS Network at the closing event of the GREENER project in Brussels. GREENER is an Erasmus+ funded project created to improve the skills of companies -primarily SMEs- to facilitate their involvement in Circular and Green Public Procurement.

The SAPIENS dissemination and the closing event 

To ensure SAPIENS Network‘s purpose of unleashing the full potential of SPP, our ESR showcased to the audience the project and the results already achieved. In particular, she illustrated the impact of SAPIENS through the open access publications, the advanced training courses, the SPP Law course, the blog posts and newsletters, and the external events, and she encouraged the audience to delve into our research as well as learn from each other’s experiences. She also elaborated on her specific research project on Public Procurement and Circular Economy.

Moreover, the closing event was an opportunity for other similar projects working on public procurement to share their knowledge and insights. The projects PROCIRC and BRINC were presented to the audience, as were their objectives and intermediate results.

GREENER’s Project targets and main results

The project encompassed organizations from Bulgaria, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, and it was focused on five targets:

• Improving the skills of procurers and administrative profiles focusing on SMEs with regard to GPP criteria, including ecolabels, material passports, product eco-design and design for recyclability, extended producer responsibility, waste prevention, packaging material and sharing, collaborative economy, reuse, and refurbishment;
• Enhancing the responsiveness of curricula of traditional profiles, such as administrative professionals working in SMEs tendering departments, to the future demand of skills (upskilling – reskilling training path);
• Increasing the employability of VET (vocational education and training) students facing global challenges;
• Improving regional actors’ readiness and creating knowledge awareness on the influence of green public procurement on the adoption of sustainable consumption and production patterns by businesses operating in the region;
• Fostering the VET attractivity by relaunching the close cooperation between VET, public administrations, government agencies, and bodies established to support SME development and SMEs, the Transparency Tools

The results of the 2-years project consisted of a pilot training course with real cases available online, the design of a skills framework for professionals, the definition of a GPP training curriculum for companies and the necessary training materials, and the development of the GREENER toolbox helping companies to apply for tenders with GPP requirements successfully.

During the closing event, the primary outcomes of the project were presented. In particular, the partners of the GREENER project showcased the 5-modules training course for SMEs and the final questionnaire with practical exercises to assess the knowledge acquired during the training.

Finally, the results of surveys and interviews conducted in the targeted countries were disclosed. The consortium developed a structured interview to be followed by all partner organizations to obtain accurate results. It turned out that, in all partner countries, public authorities need to invest more in technical staff with depth knowledge of GPP/CPP. Learning by doing was the most diffused way to learn how to conduct a daily job. Another critical difficulty for public authorities when launching GPP/CPP is changing the current mindset from a “lower price winning” to the “best sustainable quality/price,” which includes non-quantifiable criteria. Moreover, in Spain, the interviewed SMEs highlighted their reluctance to participate in public tenders due to the unknowledge of the administrative process and the fear of bureaucracy. Similarly, Italian SMEs show a high lack of confidence in the expertise of public officials. From a training and skills perspective, the interviews revealed that in Belgium, there is a need to facilitate the understanding of the law via training. Moreover, there needs to be more awareness about the possibility of putting enough weight on criteria other than price. And finally, in Bulgaria, there needs to be clarity on the EU Ecolabel as a criterion, and GPP criteria are difficult to apply as they are considered discriminatory.