The Urban Agenda for the EU Partnership on Innovative and Responsible Public Procurement held its 4th Partnership meeting on 26th February 2018 in Haarlem, The Netherlands.

The meeting was kicked-off by the Director of the City of Haarlem, followed by a short presentation by Salla Koivusalo from Vantaa on the topic "Implementation of sustainability through strategic procurement of the public organization: Implications on effects on management function, sustainability results and the markets”. The aim of the meeting was to set clear agreements for work on action plans and to formulate concrete next steps for the Partnership. Joan Prummel from Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Watermanagement presented Circular Procurement as a part of the Public Procurement Partnership.

The meeting continued with the presentation of the Scoping Fiche and questionnaire by Working Group (WG) 1 insisting that the public procurement has a big potential for smart sustainable and inclusive growth, for environmental conservation and better social conditions.

Four bottlenecks have been identified:

1. Awareness and knowledge of politicians;
2. Global or sectorial approach – limits of each;
3. The diversity of strategies in a specific geographical area;
4. Lack of knowledge on how money is spent.

The WG 2 and 3 presented its Scoping Fiches while WG 3 explained its work: 

• Propose a concept for a regional competence centre for innovative procurement;
• Set up a web-based platform for the previous project;
• Set up an advisory board.

Afternoon plenary and working sessions allowed for the action teams to make agreements about the working method, communication, etc. within the team for the next few months.

Based on six criteria (urban needs, impact, feasibility, expertise, added value and sustainability) members of the Partnership selected 7 seven actions from the 22 actions which emerged from the Scoping Fiches. Furthermore, Partners indicated in which group they wanted to participate for further elaboration of the action after this meeting.

This meeting gave the partners and especially the action leaders a lot of homework: The Partnership is now preparing the final version of action implementation documents for the end-April while the next Partnership meeting is expected in Haarlem in mid-May 2018. Stay up-to-date via this website and Twitter!