EU | Austria | България | Suomi | Deutschland | Magyarország | Italia | Latvijas Republika | Polska | Slovenija

Hungary

Current DUTCH procurement legislation/standards from the project-relevant fields

  • IT - yes
  • household appliances - no
  • PUBLIC lighting - yes
  • green power - yes
  • vehicles (public transport buses) - yes
  • building components - no
  • other (that could serve as a relevant example) - no
  • general/universal - yes

The Dutch government set up its Sustainable Public Procurement Programme in 1999. In 2003 it was followed by a political commitment in the Sustainable Development Action Programme. In 2004 the State Secretary of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Housing and the Environment formulated a national objective: in the year 2010 50% of the Dutch government contracts would be sustainable (in 2004 it was 23% according to a survey). Following this in June 2005 the Dutch Parliament decided that by 2010 all national government departments must be using 100% sustainable procurement contracts.
In order to promote this, SenterNovem, the agency of the above mentioned ministry, made so called “Purchase Pack” for 13 product groups/services. This agency is also responsible for the promotion and the essential training. In every two years a thorough monitoring report should be made.

Current national practice

In Hungary public procurement currently is regulated by the law 2003. CXXIX. Which was modified by the law 2005. CLXXII. which is in force from the 15th January 2006 and is fully complied with new procurement directives of the EU (18/2004/EC and 17/2004/EC).
The new directives give a wide range of tools to implement environmental criteria in the public procurement process but unfortunately in Hungary these are not used.

Recognised barriers

The main problem in Hungary now that there is no appropriate co-ordination which could promote green public procurement. There are a lot of governmental institutions who are responsible for the legislation, execution and controlling of public procurement but none of them wants to play a coordination role, they want the Ministry of Environment to be a leading force, but this Ministry currently does not take this role.

According to our experience the public procurers:

  • do not know exactly what green procurement is => lack of basic information
  • do not have the proper knowledge to do green procurement in practice => lack of trainings
  • do not have the appropriate tools for doing green public procurement => lack of standardised criteria and methods

Opportunities

A proper co-ordination and co-operation between the concerned governmental bodies would help a lot to make progress in this issue. After a common declaration that this tool is a very important one, the first information databases could be build and appropriate trainings could be started.
At first step it would also be very important to use existing possibilities like the systems of Energy labels and labelled environmentally friendly products.