Promoting Strategic and Green Public Procurement in France

Executive summary

In France, public procurement is a major economic lever, representing around 8% of GDP and more than a quarter of total public spending in 2021. Beyond this significant economic weight, public procurement is also subject to broader public policies, most notably environmental.

This report presents an assessment of the institutional and regulatory frameworks for green public procurement in France, as well as the capacities of State procurement officers to implement the regulatory objectives.

Key findings

France has an ambitious regulatory framework for green public procurement, centred on the National Plan for Sustainable Procurement (PNAD) and the Climate and Resilience Law, both of which require the inclusion of environmental considerations in all public procurement contracts by 2026. These texts are complemented by a number of sector-specific provisions with an environmental dimension which also impact on public procurement. Nevertheless, the practical implementation of these obligations is often complex due to the multiplicity of requirements imposed on procurement officers, in particular the simultaneous integration of these environmental considerations into different phases of the procurement cycle (needs assessment, award and contract performance). In practice, recent efforts by the French administration have led to significant progress in the practices of State procurement officers. In 2023, 54.7% of State procurement contracts included an environmental consideration. Nevertheless, achieving the national objectives set by the PNAD and the Climate and Resilience Law would be difficult without additional efforts. For this reason, the DAE has identified strengthening the capacity of State procurement officers on GPP as one of its priorities.

This strengthening must, however, take into account the institutional structure of state procurement, and in particular the division of responsibilities among several institutions and levels of governance. Furthermore, the green public procurement ecosystem includes not only procurement officers, but also decision-makers and technical experts, who, despite the importance of their role, are not always an obvious target for awareness-raising campaigns on green procurement.

One of the main challenges identified is the need to build up specific skills in green procurement, which must be harnessed at various stages of the public procurement lifecycle, such as defining needs, analysing market capacities, developing relevant and measurable award criteria, and monitoring green contract clauses. Although extensive training programmes on public procurement were developed, these programmes do not systematically address the challenges faced by procurement officers in their day-to-day activities. In addition, the cost and location of such training programmes are an obstacle for procurement professionals, particularly those in the regions. Of the 550 buyers surveyed, only 168 (30%) said they had attended a training course on green procurement in the last two years.

Key recommendations

Following the example of Canada, Poland, Japan and Ireland, France could adopt a strategy focused on building capacities to implement green public procurement. Given the multiple opportunities identified in this report, this strategy could approach capacity building from different angles and engage all stakeholders. There are several concrete actions that French public authorities could undertake or pursue:

• Ensuring that the information platform developed by the CGDD becomes a genuine one-stop shop for access to existing information and resources on green public procurement.

• Conducting an awareness-raising campaign presenting the approach of green public procurement, and in particular the use of the concept of lifecycle costing. Such a campaign would help address the budgetary silos that currently hinder greater use of GPP.

• Finalizing the development of KPIs to ensure quantitative monitoring of the regulatory targets and qualitative monitoring of purchasing strategies, which would enable the creation of a barometer of green procurement in France on a government-wide scale.

• The DAE and the DGAFP could initiate a discussion on the contribution of the procurement function to the greening of administrations, and rethink job descriptions as they appear on tools promoting public employment, such as the Choisir le Service Public platform.

• Developing DAE's advisory role on green public procurement by piloting the development of a help desk led by the Sustainable Procurement Office would both meet buyers' need for support and assess the relevance in France of this model, which exists in many OECD countries.

• Relying more on sustainable procurement advisors within state entities, so that they become true agents of change.

In addition, enhancing the skills of both procurement officers and specifiers would enable the mobilization of various procurement strategies with a real impact on the State's environmental performance. France could therefore:

• Setting up a certified green public procurement training course would help tackle some of the current challenges, such as the attractiveness of the procurement function and the allocation of training budgets within government bodies. An alternative would be to centralise training budgets for procurement, drawing inspiration from other cross-cutting fields such as IT.

• Developing procurement officers' skills in techniques specific to green public procurement, throughout the entire procurement cycle.

• Favouring a more practical approach, with small group exercises on different environmental issues, could encourage the exchange of experiences and reflection on the challenges encountered.

• Building on the tool-sheets currently being developed by the DAE, offering short training modules by procurement category, with a focus on the procurement officer/technical expert duo, would enable participants to apply the content of these training courses in their day-to-day activities.

• Building capacity through the development of life cycle costing and carbon footprint tools.

The OECD will continue to support the DAE in implementing these recommendations, in particular through the development of training and practical tools.