The Training and Awareness-raising Activities in Socially Responsible Public Procurement is an EU-wide initiative on how to use public procurement to achieve social goals. ICLEI Europe implements this project on behalf of the European Commission together with AEIDL, Diesis Network and Reves Network, alongside many multipliers across the EU.
The general objective of the project is to increase awareness on the benefits of Socially Responsible Public Procurement – or SRPP – among public buyers across the EU, thus encouraging contracting authorities at the national, regional and local levels to use SRPP whenever possible in their purchasing policies and practices. A secondary objective is to increase the capacity of social economy enterprises to access public procurement markets.
The legal framework established by Directive 2014/24/EU empowers governments to utilise their ‘power of the purse’ to advance social, environmental, and innovation goals when procuring goods, services, and works. The European Commission, recognising the value of SRPP, emphasizes in the ‘Buying Social’ guide that it enables public authorities to provide quality services and products to their communities. Even with limited budgets, SRPP can yield additional social and ethical benefits, contributing to mitigating the negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis, amongst others.