At its Plenary Session on 7 May 2021, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) adopted the Opinion "Safe and sustainable chemicals for a toxic-free environment in Europe's cities and regions". They see it as important for local and regional authorities to require the goods and products they acquire through public procurement to contain safe chemicals, thus helping to ensure that undesirable goods and products are phased out.

The aim of this paper written in the framework of the 'EU Food Policy Coalition (EU FPC) Public Procurement Task Force' is to provide five key arguments in favour of sustainable healthy food procurement to address the challenges of the EU food system. The paper seeks to provide strong evidence and thereby overcome any misconceptions about the gains of implementing sustainable food procurement in a comprehensive form.

The Strategy for the Impulse and Consolidation of the Innovation Procurement in the Public Administration of Andalusia is a combination of economic measures and other actions such as awareness, training and the creation of a structure of governance and support of free services, that seek to generate a change towards an administration of innovation, which transmits its long-term needs that requires companies to innovate, promoting research and business innovation through the innovation procurement.

This discussion paper is a step towards addressing the link between open and sustainable procurement by sketching the state of play in both fields and exploring paths towards a deepened collaboration between open and sustainable procurement advocates and practitioners - as a key priority to advance the SDGs and for a transformative recovery from Covid-19. The paper draws on a number of key informant interviews conducted with practitioners and experts from the open contracting and the sustainable procurement fields. bu

A set of recommendations directed at national policy makers has been published by the Circular PP project. These recommendations are the result of a large analysis conducted by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) to assess the state of circular public procurement policy and practice across eight Baltic Sea countries (Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Latvia, Poland, and Finland) as well as comparisons to the Netherlands and UK. The full analysis can be found here.

Provides recommendations on possible policy schemes, methodologies and initiatives for the deployment of Green Public Procurement for Innovation in European territories, aligned with smart specialisation strategies, to favour the participation of SMEs in public procurement processes and improve their competitiveness.

The Dutch Action Plan for Responsible and Sustainable Procurement focuses on the effective and efficient use of procurement as an instrument to realise policy objectives over the period 2015-2020.

Cornwall Council's Responsible Procurement Policy requires council officers to take sustainability considerations into account when procuring, with a focus on six sustainability aspects: Environmental Sustainability & Carbon management, Equality and Diversity, Safeguarding, Ethical Sourcing, SME Engagement, Health and Safety.
A guide for Suppliers has also been published and can be downloaded from the Council's website.

Demand and user-driven innovation policy was identified by Finland's national innovation strategy as a key policy area to be developed. This document was created to determine the demand and user-driven innovation policy areas in need of development, and to compile an action plan for the policy area.