# Sustainable Public Procurement in Central European Countries. Can It Also Bring Savings?
## 5 Conclusions  
The European Commission supports the implementation of SPP within all EU countries. However, the Central European countries (especially V4 countries) lag behind in the implementation of new EU regulations. The first aim of the current research was to analyze the share of SPP among other types of public procurement in these countries. The data from the TED database 2017-2018 were used as the basic input for the analysis. In order to isolate SPP, four groups of MEAT criteria (economic, social, environmental, and mixed) were used. To answer the first research question (RQ1) stated in Section 1, the share of procurements with SPP MEAT criteria was isolated from the dataset. Only 4.5% of procurements in V4 countries used SPP MEAT criteria within the procurement process. This is a relatively low number. Significant differences were found by analysis of the distribution of SPP MEAT criteria in procurement processes among V4 countries. The highest share of SPP MEAT criteria in procurement processes in the analyzed dataset was found in Poland (81.5%), followed by Hungary (10.2%) and Czech Republic (7.6%). The share of SPP MEAT criteria in Slovakia was only 0.6%. The second research question (RQ2) focused on the impact of various procurement factors on the creation of savings in procurement using MEAT criteria. In regression analysis, the influence of seven different procurement factors on potential savings were analyzed. The results are described in detail in Section 3 and are further discussed in Section 4, but results can be summarized as follows. When considering the type of contract, the highest savings can be obtained in services when using MEAT criteria. There are lower savings when using the open procedure and in the case that the object of the procurement is funded by EU structural funds. In this context, it is also important to note that the use of framework agreements significantly reduce the generation of potential savings in procurement. On the other hand, when a contract is awarded to a single economic operator, savings increase. The same effect, higher savings, are observed in cases when the number of offers from SMEs increases and the total number of offers increases. Two implications for practice can be derived from our research. According to our research, the minimum weight of SPP MEAT criteria should be determined by the policy makers to be able to consider the procurement process as sustainable public procurement. This could help to reach SPP policy aims more efficiently. Secondly, according to our results, the inclusion of SPP MEAT criteria does not significantly influence the potential savings of procurement. Therefore, contracting authorities should not be afraid of an unusually high negative impact of SPP MEAT criteria on final prices. For further research, the authors recommended investigating the various aspects of SPP within MEAT criteria and their impact on individual elements of procurement. In the case of a very low weight of SPP MEAT criterion, the aim of SPP policy remains unfulfilled and the only positive result is good looking statistic reports from public authorities. This policy issue can be solved by defining the minimum weight of SPP within MEAT criteria in public procurement in order to report them as SPP. Sustainable MEAT criteria should be the optimal combination of indicators that measure economic efficiency and those that quantify social responsibility and environmental resilience. The minimum level of these indicators or their relative weights should be set through procurement legislation. However, it is important that any future regulations in this area consider the specificities related to the procurement of goods, services, or works. In addition to the original focus of this article, the authors state that the current situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on European public procurement markets should be considered in further research.