French PRIMES partner trains elected officials in GPP

Although theoretically mandatory in France for almost 10 years now (French Procurement Code 2006) Green Public Procurement remains marginal with only 7% of procurements that take into account sustainable development. Well aware of the problem, Rhônalpénergie-Environnement (RAEE) proposed, in close partnership with the Association of Mayors of France (elected representative association in France), to train elected officials to green public procurement.

16.06.2015

Sustainable public procurement in France is above all still a voluntary approach to some elected officials interested in sustainable development.

Political will is decisive, however, since it is the elected officials, who ultimately decide to take into account - or not - sustainable development in their procurements.

Not only for technicians, also for elected officials

While so far RAEE usually organized trainings for technicians and those in charge of procurements, RAEE therefore proposed to the Association of Mayors of France, as part of the project PRIMES, to organize a regional training cycle dedicated to elected in June 2015.

Four sessions were organized in different cities of the Rhône-Alpes region to allow elected officials to travel to the nearest city to home. These meetings allowed at first to present green public procurement and then very quickly to give voice to elected allowing them to ask any questions.

Most of them were interested in the following questions: Is green public procurement more expensive? How to take into account the overall cost? How to choose from the various environmental labels? Is it possible to take into account the social dimension in public procurement? Who can help to develop a sustainable market?