Uptake or Not Uptake Gpp (green Public Procurement)? Does Public Governance Make the Difference? the Case of France

Abstract: Public authorities are major consumers. Public Procurement represents 10 to 20% of the GDP and an efficient public procurement process should help public buyer to value for money. Nowadays, public procurement is more than a process by which public authorities, such as government or local authorities, purchase work, goods or services from companies with the only value-for-money objective. Through the inclusion of environmental, innovation, industrial or social policy objectives in the public procurement rules it became a real Policy Instrument. Typically, introducing green criteria in the awarding procedure, what is called Green Public Procurement (GPP) or green purchasing, is supposed to make an important contribution to sustainable consumption and production. It is thus considered yet as one of the environmental tools among others (taxes, subsidies, norms) that the public authorities can use to push for an environmental policy at the State and local level. However, is it cost-effective? Buying green is far from being an easy and cheap task. Public buyers need to be aware and trained on how to buy green. How the evolution of Public Procurement Regulation has been put into practice? What are the determinants of GPP uptake? This paper addresses these issues in the case of French municipalities based on an original database build from public data on public procurement as well as from a survey of municipalities related to their behaviours in terms of sustainable public purchasing. Our aim is to study whether variables as the buyers’ GPP awareness, the governance of purchasing services and the size of municipalities influence the investment in green public procurement by municipalities. Moreover, we might highlight additional barriers as the lack of political motivation, the lack of training for buyers as well as a reluctance to change.