Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the leading international event on cities and smart urban solutions organized by Fira de Barcelona will hold its biggest edition to date in 2024. Under the theme “Live Better” the show and congress will experience a 30% growth of the exhibition floorspace from the record-setting 2023 event. The summit held every year in Barcelona expects to host 1.100 exhibitors, 850 cities and over 25.000 attendees from November 5-7 and will spread over halls 2 and 3 of Fira’s Gran Via venue.

The event will focus on strategies to transform current metropolises into more sustainable, efficient, and livable spaces bringing together leading companies from around the world to showcase the latest solutions and technologies enabling cities to become more efficient in areas such as mobility, public services, utilities, citizen engagement and sustainability.

Along these lines, SCEWC will gather over 600 speakers and international experts in its congress to share the latest experiences and breakthroughs in urban transformation in a conference program structured around eight main tracks: Enabling Technologies, Energy & Environment, Mobility, Governance, Living & Inclusion, Economy, Infrastructure & Buildings, and Safety & Security.

The 2024 Electronics Watch Annual Conference, "Public Procurement and the Evolving Due Diligence Landscape", will take place from 6-7 November in Brussels, Belgium. It is co-hosted by the Flemish Agency for Facility Operations (Het Facilitair Bedrijf), with support from the Flemish Government.

The Annual Conference facilitates learning and exchange at the intersection of socially responsible public procurement and labour rights, and provides a unique opportunity for Electronics Watch affiliates and monitoring partners to meet face-to-face. It will raise awareness about the issues workers are facing, and how they can be addressed through the public procurement process.

Programme

Wednesday, 6 November 2024

(The morning sessions are open to external, invited guests.)
9:00 – 9:30 Welcome
9:30 – 11:00 The evolving regulatory landscape: a revolution or a missed opportunity?
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 – 13:00 Accountability for business harms: stories from workers' rights defenders from the mines to the factories
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
(The remainder of the agenda is restricted to affiliates and monitoring partners)
14:00 – 15:30 Expectations, realities, and trade-offs: conversations with monitoring partners and public buyers
15:30 – 16:00 Coffee break
16:00 – 17:30 Collective leverage in action
17:30 – 18:00 Closing remarks

Thursday, 7 November 2024

9:00 – 10:30 Public procurement innovation: updates from affiliates
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 – 12:30 Simulation game
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 15:30 Obtaining credible evidence with limited access: updates from monitoring partners
15:30 – 15:45 Coffee break
15:45 – 16:30 Wrap-up and thanks

For more information, and to register click here

Maltese public authorities, SMEs 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 Valletta on 18 November and will be delivered in Maltese. It 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.

As a policymaker or public procurer you will discover best practice examples from other EU countries, how to design tendering procedures that include social criteria, and how to engage social enterprises in procurement procedures.
As a social enterprise or SME you will learn how to bid for public contracts that include social requirements, how to form successful consortia with other businesses, and meet social requirements.

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.

Interested participants can apply for the training here. Selected participants (the training is only open for stakeholders from Malta!) wll be informed by e-mail. As spots for this training are being allocated on a first-come-first-served basis, we encourage you to apply as soon as possible!

The European Commission training workshop in Malta is organised by ICLEI Europe in cooperation with Local Councils' Association Malta. More information about the initiative can be found here.

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.