Sustainable Procurements Action Plan of Wallonia

The main objective of the Action Plan is to attain 100% of green public procurements by 2020. This means public procurements without social dumping, SME-friendly, fostering professional insertion, contributing to the fight against climate change and contributing to efficient resources management. In addition, this plan will contribute to the achievement of Wallonia’s international commitments in terms of sustainable development, especially SDG 12 on sustainable consumption and production. The Actions plan entails 3 different types of actions in order to attain these goals: • Actions aiming to sensitize, help and support contracting authorities; • Actions aiming to increase SME access to public procurements ; • Actions working towards the development of several practical tools. For example, a communication campaign is to be launched in February 2018 to show the benefits of green purchases to procurers and to remind them of the tools available to green their procurements. Several tools and actions have already been developed during the first action plan for sustainable public purchases (2013-2016) such as a helpdesk to assist contracting authorities in the integration of environmental, social and ethical clauses. These tools will be further improved and new ones are being developed. Concretely, contracting authorities have access to several tools in addition to the helpdesk to support them if they want to adopt a sustainable public procurement policy : a guide to limit social dumping, 3 guides on social clauses, a framework paper on public procurement law and a network of sustainable public buyers. Additionally, more tools are in development and the existing tools will continuously be adapted to legislation/societal changes.