Slovenia

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

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

There are no specific / partial legislative documents, which would handle individual fields of green procurement (see above). There are, however, regulations and other documents, which deal with energy- and environmental issues (efficiency, emissions, labelling, ...) and can serve as an excellent foothold when planning of green purchasing. The new Public Procurement Act (December 2006) explicitly introduces green procurement criteria.

According to the Annual Report of the Public Procurement Office for the Year 2001 Submitted to the Government of the Republic of Slovenia and to the European Commision (2003) public procurement in the year 2001 represented around 10% of GDP or 24,3% of the value of the national budget.

The former Slovenian Public Procurement Act - official consolidated version - came into force in April 2004, as an update and upgrade of the version from the year 2000, which took into consideration Directives 92/50/EEC, 93/36/EEC, and 93/37/EEC. These procurement regulations did not comprise environmental (or green, sustainable, energy, ...) criteria, although green procurement was being informally encouraged by the Government. It was announced that an upgrade of the Act would follow soon, in order to fulfill all EU-member obligations.

The implementation of EU Directives, 2004/18/EC (on the co-ordination of procedures for the award of public works contracts, public supply contracts and public service contracts), and 2004/17/EC (procurement procedures of entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors) represented the framework and basis for the recent amendment of the above-mentioned Act.

In December 2006 a new Public Procurement Act (ZJN-2), fully harmonized with the EU legislation, was promulgated. For the first time energy and environmental criteria are explicitly brought forward, not as an obligation, but as a (recommended) possibility in contract award procedures. The Act introduces terms such as environmental protection, environmental characteristics, and similar. Criteria from different green labeling schemes can be included in the tender documents and taken into account when assessing economically most viable offers.

Current national practice

Even though there is no legal obligation for green public purchasing / procurement, a clear trend towards taking these issues into consideration can be observed. One of the reasons is certainly the potential many-sided benefit and added value recognized by purchasers. However, at the moment one still cannot speak of green procurement as of a general or frequent practice.

It is expected that the amended Public Procurement Act will at least draw stronger attention towards an inclusion of green issues within technical specifications into the tender documents. The requested characteristics should of course be closely connected to the product and to its intended function. The most important issue is that conditions and standards stated in tender documents are not discriminatory and that they do not limit the competition. Hopefully, the public institutions (including the Government itself) will become more aware of the importance and benefits of green procurement, which would serve as an example also to subjects not legally bound to the mentioned Act ("top-down").

Some more common current examples of consideration of green issues within the procurement process in general include the request by developers/investors of new buildings to planning companies for an acquisition of an energy label for buildings within the non-obligatory pilot scheme, consideration of the Quality Mark in Civil Engineering when for example purchasing windows for replacement in existent buildings, prescription of energy and environmental requisitions within project briefs for renovation of buildings and for new buildings (thermal insulation, heating systems, ...), which go beyond the minimum technical regulations, deciding for advanced control systems for lighting and for energy efficient luminaries when a school building is being renovated, taking into account fuel consumption as one of the most important parameters when purchasing company cars, etc. Green issues are also immanent when applying for different state subsidies and "eco-loans", or for example when making arrangements for energy audits and further feasibility studies.

On several occasions national workshops, seminars and conferences (for example: Slovenia and EU requisitions regarding energy efficiency of buildings and their impact on the environment; organised by BCEI ZRMK in December 2004) included green public procurement themes, where also representatives of the State were invited to lay out national ("official") tendencies and to encourage the involvement of green specifications and requirements into the procurement process.

At the moment there is no comprehensive statistical data available to be able to define which party (public/governmental bodies, local communities, companies, ...) is implementing green procurement principles relatively on the most regular basis. No cumulative data can already be presented, either.

Recognised barriers

There are no major obstacles for introduction of regular green procurement practice. As explained above, national legislation (the amended Public Procurement Act) now presents legal groundwork and thus encourages green procurement. It is time for the eminent actors to serve as good practice examples.

The success of the new Act bringing forward the green issues depends also on accompanying activities, especially promotion, qualification, various incentives, and also on wide dissemination of good practice examples as role models.

Some more obvious obstacles in this process are probably lack of relevant trained personnel responsible for work on procurement, tendering, etc., lack of detailed and consistent / standardised (green) criteria, and lack of tools. For example, the Eco-label web page can of course be of useful assistance.

Opportunities

The Government has recently been shaping a set of activities to be performed in the near future regarding the green procurement practice. This includes: an analysis of current situation (most often purchased products, products with the largest environmental impact, existent criteria, experience from other countries); wide distribution of the Buying green handbook (EC), translated and available in Slovenian language from 2005; composition of an operational programme for initiation of green public procurement in Slovenia (definition of goals, definition of criteria, education of personnel responsible for procurement, activation of a part of the CO2 tax as an incentive for municipalities to organize "green" calls for tender, gradual introduction of environmental management in public administration).

With priorities, goals, and criteria well defined in the short-term future, and by formation of a set of good examples as a stimulus, "green" should gradually become a standard content of procurement practice. It is expected that also the GreenLabelsPurchase project with its activities and tools will facilitate this process in Slovenia.