{"title":"European funds and green public procurement","authors":"Ruben Nicolas , Vítězslav Titl , Fredo Schotanus","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108400","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The European Commission co-funds public projects through the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) to stimulate the sustainable economic development of EU Member States. The ESIF budget is about 90 billion euros annually and ESIF beneficiaries are explicitly encouraged to increase their use of Green Public Procurement (GPP) since 2014. In this paper, we study to what extent ESIF co-funding affects the uptake of GPP, using a dataset with all public tender notices in the Czech Republic (2006–2019). Our findings suggest that ESIF co-funding instigates selection behaviour by contracting authorities to improve chances of receiving co-funding. After accounting for selection effects, we find that ESIF co-funding has a small but significant effect on the uptake of GPP. Studying exogenous changes in the ESIF policy conditions, we find that GPP uptake responds to changes in the availability of co-funding and not to stronger policy objectives related to sustainability. Finally, we find that the contracting authority's prior experience with GPP is positively associated with ESIF co-funding and has only a small effect on GPP uptake aside from ESIF.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51021,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":6.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ecological Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800924002970","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The European Commission co-funds public projects through the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) to stimulate the sustainable economic development of EU Member States. The ESIF budget is about 90 billion euros annually and ESIF beneficiaries are explicitly encouraged to increase their use of Green Public Procurement (GPP) since 2014. In this paper, we study to what extent ESIF co-funding affects the uptake of GPP, using a dataset with all public tender notices in the Czech Republic (2006–2019). Our findings suggest that ESIF co-funding instigates selection behaviour by contracting authorities to improve chances of receiving co-funding. After accounting for selection effects, we find that ESIF co-funding has a small but significant effect on the uptake of GPP. Studying exogenous changes in the ESIF policy conditions, we find that GPP uptake responds to changes in the availability of co-funding and not to stronger policy objectives related to sustainability. Finally, we find that the contracting authority's prior experience with GPP is positively associated with ESIF co-funding and has only a small effect on GPP uptake aside from ESIF.
期刊介绍:
Ecological Economics is concerned with extending and integrating the understanding of the interfaces and interplay between "nature''s household" (ecosystems) and "humanity''s household" (the economy). Ecological economics is an interdisciplinary field defined by a set of concrete problems or challenges related to governing economic activity in a way that promotes human well-being, sustainability, and justice. The journal thus emphasizes critical work that draws on and integrates elements of ecological science, economics, and the analysis of values, behaviors, cultural practices, institutional structures, and societal dynamics. The journal is transdisciplinary in spirit and methodologically open, drawing on the insights offered by a variety of intellectual traditions, and appealing to a diverse readership.
Specific research areas covered include: valuation of natural resources, sustainable agriculture and development, ecologically integrated technology, integrated ecologic-economic modelling at scales from local to regional to global, implications of thermodynamics for economics and ecology, renewable resource management and conservation, critical assessments of the basic assumptions underlying current economic and ecological paradigms and the implications of alternative assumptions, economic and ecological consequences of genetically engineered organisms, and gene pool inventory and management, alternative principles for valuing natural wealth, integrating natural resources and environmental services into national income and wealth accounts, methods of implementing efficient environmental policies, case studies of economic-ecologic conflict or harmony, etc. New issues in this area are rapidly emerging and will find a ready forum in Ecological Economics.