There are many political demands for procurement procedures that are designed to be sustainable. The other side of the coin, however, is that the responsible bodies and the procedures to be applied are far from being sufficiently well known.
A competence center for sustainable procurement has been established within the federal administration. It operates under the abbreviation “KNB” and can be accessed via the website www.nachhaltige-beschaffung.info. The head of the Competence Center for Sustainable Procurement gave a presentation at a lecture event for the Hessian state administration on 14 July 2014 in Wiesbaden, in which she provided an overview of the current status of sustainable procurement. She explained that although the KNB is based at the Procurement Office of the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Bonn, it is also responsible for other regional authorities such as the federal states and municipalities. University administrations are also explicitly included.
As part of the KNB’s activities, the most diverse groups of experts are first brought together. It is crucial that knowledge and experience are pooled.
This is why the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy has set up an “Alliance for Sustainable Procurement”. This alliance is made up of various expert groups, namely one for resource efficiency, one for mobility, one for sustainable construction and one for public transport. This is complemented by a monitoring group, which is supported operationally with the help of the services of the Kienbaum Group.
The KNB itself, which is based at the Procurement Office of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, consists of the head, Sabine Poell, and a further eight employees, whose main task is to support the development of guidelines for a wide range of procurement areas. The one truth is, of course, that aspects of environmentally friendly and socially responsible procurement in the various areas of procurement are first of all worked out. The other truth is, of course, that concrete instructions for action and also assistance for suitability and award criteria as well as other implementation conditions must be made available in the context of contract award and contract development.
The KNB at the interface between the expert groups at the BMWi and the various procurers at the local authorities has the function, for example, of organizing training and further education. The aim is to familiarize the contracting authorities with the new requirements. But it is also about setting the necessary accents for sustainable procurement behavior in the training of civil servants and employees. For example, there are corresponding projects in cooperation with the Federal University of Applied Sciences for Public Administration.
The KNB also publishes specific product group sheets on the website, which contain, for example, calculation methods for life cycle costs.
There is also an agreement with Bitkom in Berlin, on the basis of which standards and recommendations for action are to be developed with regard to compliance with the ILO core labor standards, particularly in the procurement of hardware. This specifically involves the creation of a model declaration, which is then to be used in a wide variety of procurement areas within the scope of IT contracts.
There is also an agreement with the textile association. The area of textile procurement, which has recently been the subject of particular public debate, is also to be brought into a situation in which the request for model declarations is taken for granted by the business community. Experience has shown that early involvement of the associations in the public sector’s efforts to promote sustainable procurement meets with greater acceptance in the business community.
In addition, a discussion platform will be opened to offer an exchange of experiences. However, this platform will initially be run as an internal platform. This will be followed by activities for the creation of product group sheets.
Another area of KNB activity is the so-called “Electronics Watch”, which only applies to the IT sector, but aims to ensure certifications in which there are also on-site inspections in the factories, for example in the area of hardware.
Finally, KNB’s task is to provide comprehensive information to everyone – for example in the form of newsletters that can be subscribed to electronically via the website.
Ms. Poell also addressed the new EU procurement directives. From the point of view of sustainable procurement, it should be emphasized that the decision of the ECJ from May 2012 (ECJ, judgment of 10. 5. 2012, case C-368/10 “EKO”) has been withdrawn insofar as, in the case of seals or quality labels such as the “Blue Angel” or the Fairtrade label, all characteristics that form the prerequisites for obtaining the label no longer have to be listed again in the tender documents for the sake of transparency, as the ECJ had required. The new procurement directive therefore aims to strengthen generally binding standards in which recognized labels that are as widespread as possible no longer have to be listed exhaustively with regard to their minimum requirements.
This should also tend to apply in the electronics sector for the “TCO” or “EnergyStar” label. Other labels such as the “GOZ” or, in the paper sector, the “PEFC” and “FSC” labels will also be subject to this modified regulation in the new directive. It will certainly be necessary to wait and see how the German transposition law is implemented in detail.
