The Efficiency of green public procurement regulation in Lithuania as an element of achieving objectives of sustainable development
ENIn 2019, Communication No. COM (2019) 640 of the European Commission set out a European Green Deal (hereinafter – the Green Deal) for the European Union and its citizens (The European Green Deal 2019). This entails a new growth strategy that aims to transform the European Union into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050 and where economic growth is decoupled from resource use. The Green Deal acknowledges the role that public authorities play in the achievement of the high aims set forth in the aforementioned document and specifies that public authorities, including European Union institutions, should lead by example and ensure that their procurement is green (The European Green Deal 2019). Therefore, green public procurement procedures are an important measure of achieving the aims of sustainable development set forth in the Green Deal. Green public procurement in the European Union is becoming more and more relevant as – in directives on public concessions (2014/23/EU), on classic public procurement (2014/24/EU), and on utilities (2014/25/EU) – the aim is to reach the 50 % green public procurement target (Cinti 2020). In the Republic of Lithuania, the high priority of sustainable development is also recognized. The Government of the Republic of Lithuania (2021) has adopted a regulation obligating contracting authorities and contracting entities to ensure that green public procurement procedures amount to no less than 50 % of the total procurement value of a particular contracting authority in 2022, and no less than 100% in 2023 and beyond. Therefore, green public procurement procedures in the Republic of Lithuania are given great importance and priority even at the regulatory level.In the legal doctrine of Lithuania there is little research on the topic of the efficiency of green public procurement regulation. In a recent article by B. Šimkutė (2022), the legal regulation of green public procurement was not analyzed, and a general conclusion was made that the execution of green public procurement will inevitably result in necessary increases in the budgets of contracting authorities. In another article, R. Rudauskienė (2019) analyzed the definition of green public procurement in Lithuania by comparing these definitions in terms of legislative and sub-legislative legal regulation. The author concluded that green public procurement at the legislative level (i. e., the Law on Public Procurement) is considerably wider in scope than at the level of sub-legislative legal regulation. Furthermore, as the environmental criteria outlined in sub-legislative legal regulation are very detailed and specific, this precludes contracting authorities from using other, more innovative, new or advanced environmental criteria that are not expressed or embedded in specific environmental requirements (Rudauskienė 2019). The requirements for green public procurement procedures in the Republic of Lithuania are regulated by the decision of the Minister of Environment of June 28, 2011, with ensuing alterations (hereinafter – the Decision of the Minister of Environment). This entails not only the definition of green public procurement (i. e., the requirements essential for a public procurement procedure to be qualified as green public procurement) but also particular requirements for each sort of public procurement object (for instance, office supplies, IT equipment, building design services, construction works etc.) that must be applied.In the view of the author, the fact that green public procurement requirements are regulated by the Decision of the Minister of Environment (2011) and not the Law on Public Procurement (1996) is a positive sign, because a ministerial decision can be changed more easily than a law. This enables the legal regulation itself to be more fluid and up to date. Since the execution of green public procurement entails the application of additional and extensive detailed environmental criteria, an obvious problematic question becomes apparent: can these green public procurement procedures be considered to be efficient? An efficient public procurement procedure is identified by the author as a public procurement which has been carried out successfully and enables a contracting authority to conclude a public contract with the winner of a tender. Therefore, the efficiency of green public procurement is analyzed based on the view that it is hindered by legal regulation or its interpretation, which prevents the successful execution of the public procurement procedure and the conclusion of a public procurement contract. [Extract, p. 61-62]
