Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (the Netherlands) is organising a webinar on how the two recent reports by former Commissioner Enrico Letta and former ECB head Mario Draghi could contribute to changes in the EU's approach to the internal market. Such changes could carry major implications for public procurement professionals.

Letta's report notes that the internal market was "born in a smaller world" and calls for "a fifth freedom" on research, innovation and education, highlighting the need to strengthen the EU towards the rest of the world. Draghi's report states that the foundations on which the internal market have been shaken and focusses on innovation, decarbonization, security and reducing dependencies. Both reports contain concrete proposals to change the way in which the internal market operates. 

The webinar aims to provide an initial understanding of the implications of the Letta and Draghi reports for the functioning of multiple fields of EU law, and to discuss the potential future positive effects and negative implications of the proposals to change the functioning of the internal market. It will focus on questions such as: what will be the effect of these changes to how we regulate competitive markets?; will the room to give state aid within the EU increase?; how will the external relations between the EU and the outside world change, given the stronger call for strategic autonomy?; where will we note changes into how consumers are protected inside and outside the EU?

For more information on the webinar, and to register, click here

Austrian public authorities and social economy entities are invited to take part in a training organised as part of the WeBuySocialEU capacity-building efforts. The training will take place in Graz on 5 December and will be delivered in German. The training is designed to help stakeholders not only gain much-needed expertise in socially responsible public procurement but also to establish participants as the go-to person within their organisation for advice and expertise in this increasingly important field. The training is specifically tailored to professional and particular contexts, thanks to in-depth research and interviews conducted by national experts in autumnn 2023.

The training will give participants a better understanding of the social economy in Austria, and of the shared goals and needs of public buyers and social economy actors. In addition, participants will learn about the benefits and challenges of involving social economy organisations in public tenders, how to implement social and sustainability criteria in public tenders, and how to improve collaboration between the social economy sector and public authorities engaging in Socially Responsible Public Procurement (SRPP).

The training takes place in the context of the European Commission's WeBuySocialEU initiative, which seeks to enhance social responsibility in public procurement by building capacity and awareness across the EU. At the end of the training public authorities should have more knowledge on how to design tendering procedures that are accessible to the social economy and include social aspects, while social economy enterprises will be able to better compete for public tenders that include social considerations.

The European Commission training workshop in Austria is organised by ICLEI Europe in cooperation with arbeit plus. More information about the initiative can be found here. To apply, click here.