Latvia

Current procurement legislation/standards from the project-relevant fields

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

Since green procurement has been introduced into national legislation only since May 1, 2006 no specific legislation or standards exist relevant to project fields yet.

Current national practice

New version of Public Procurement law is in force since May 1, 2006 and fully complies with new EU procurement directives 18/2004/EC and 17/2004/EC. The new version of law is favourable towards green procurement but it states that environmental criteria can be used on voluntary basis which leads to situation when they are not used.

Recognised barriers

• none of state institutions is appointed to be responsible for implementation and coordination of green procurement which leads to lack of structured and targeted state policy and tools for implementation of green procurement;
• although green procurement has been promoted by couple of campaigns organised by environmental NGOs, lack of information, basic knowledge, understanding of issue, tools, standardised criteria and methods are the main barriers to implement green procurement in real life.

Opportunities

Information dissemination and awareness raising about general issues of green procurement shall be among the activities that shall be implemented at the first stage. It shall be followed by preparation of tools and standardised criteria and methods and training of state and municipal as well as commercial sector actors. Since green procurement is voluntary action, strong emphasis shall be put on motivation of market actors.