Shifting from Voluntary to Mandatory Mechanisms to scale up Sustainable Public Procurement – The Integration of Voluntary Sustainability Standards into Public Procurement and Trade Policies

Abstract: Green and Sustainable Public Procurement are widely recognized as the strategic lever to promote innovation, sustainability, and the strategic tool on environmental and social protections. The extension of sustainability beyond environmental aspects, especially the integration of social and economic aspects is becoming common grounds in most jurisdictions. Meanwhile, this generates a considerable number of legal uncertainties about the legal status of sustainability laws, policies, and their relations with public procurement. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze legal uncertainties in the continuously evolving concepts of sustainability and to define the status quo of CSR and its relationship with Sustainable Public Procurement. This has been achieved by analyzing two sets of legal provisions developed under the WTO and the EU jurisprudence. At the international level, the WTO has been criticized for prioritizing global trade over environmental concerns. Only in recent decades, the WTO regulatory bodies have shown the possibilities of expanding the scope of environmental and social measures within international trade policies and government procurements. The revised GPA 2012 has created the legal possibilities of inclusion of secondary policy objectives in government procurements. Finally, the challenges and reforms under the WTO jurisprudence have influenced the EU law, and the GPP and SPP have become common and widespread practices throughout Europe. The CJEU has made great contributions to these challenges by legitimizing the use of public procurement rules in support of social and environmental objectives in the form of strategic public procurement in a number of landmark cases.