engleski

Public procurement-a tool for social integration and sustainable development?

Public procurement is an extremely important part of the legal system of every country. Public procurement procedures make up to 20 percent of GDP in the EU Member States, making the state perhaps the most important economic entity. However, the scope of public procurement may go significantly beyond the economic benefits. The state, as the arguably largest economic entity in the country, has the right and responsibility to use its economic power to achieve additional social and environmental goals. Through public procurement, it is possible to encourage the employment of vulnerable and minority groups, to demand better working conditions for employees, but also to improve the environmental standards of a country. The last few public procurement  regulatory frameworks of the European Union have been developing in this direction, mainly the regulatory framework of 2014. The subject of this paper is the analysis of public procurement procedures as a tool for achieving social and environmental objectives within the legal framework of the Republic of Croatia and the European Union. I will try to determine the possibility of achieving these additional goals in Croatian public procurement law, through the analysis of the provisions of the previous Public Procurement Acts, and the Public Procurement Act currently in force, and the practice of national bodies and courts. Also, I will compare the current legal framework of the Republic of Croatia with new public procurement regulatory framework of the European Union. I will try to determine what are the possibilities of the use of public procurement as a tool to promote social inclusion and environmental responsibility in Croatia, and how does the current public procurement regulatory framework of the European Union differ from the previous one in this regard. Social protection and inclusion, as well as protection of the environment should be among the top priorities of each country. It is therefore necessary to consider all the tools that would be able to achieve these priorities. Public procurement may not be the most obvious, but it is certainly one of the most practical ways of promoting the objectives of promoting integration and sustainable development.

public procurement; sustainable development; EU

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