# Green Public Procurement at a Regional Level.
## 2 Background and Previous Findings  
The current EU regulatory framework for public procurement is Directive 2014/24/EU [22] (which repealed Directive 2004/18/EC) [23]. Both standards refer to the environmental characteristics to be considered. In Spain, Directive 2004/18/EC was transposed into Act30/2007 [24], which became a consolidated text in Royal Decree 3/2011 [25]. Whereas Directive 2014/24/EU was transposed into Act9/2017 [26], which entered into force in March 2018. According to this legislation, contractual requirements must consider environmental criteria such as reduced emissions, noise, reduced consumption of resources, etc. Although some authors [27] warn about the difficulty of monitoring environmental conditions during the execution of a project, the adopted criteria should preferably be measurable, since one of the main difficulties in the application of the GPP is the vagueness and lack of clarity in its definition [2; 8; 28]. In the last decade, GPP has become one of the fundamental pillars of environmental and procurement policies in the European Union [29; 30; 31] and worldwide (USA [32], China [28], Hong Kong [33]), including developing countries such as Malaysia [34] and Vietnam [35]. One of the most important initiatives at a European level is Procura+, which started in 2000 and consists of a network of European public authorities and regions that connect, exchange, and act on sustainable and innovation procurement (more information at www.procuraplus.org). There are currently more than 40 European public authorities that communicate on sustainable and innovation procurement, sharing experiences and knowledge. The Procura+ initiative published the third edition of the 'Procura+ Manual' [36] in 2016, which follows the transposition of the 2014 Procurement Directive, to facilitate the strategic use of public contracts for broader societal goals. The Marrakech process is another important initiative related to GPP practices. It was initiated by the United Nations in 2003 as a part of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, which recognised sustainable consumption and production as an overarching objective, and an essential requirement for sustainable development [37]. In 2006, [PERSON] etal. [38] analysed 865 responses to questionnaires and processed 1000 tender documents in EU countries. They identified two groups related to the use of GPP: the 'green 7' (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Sweden); and the 'other 18'. In agreement with other authors [19; 21; 29], they also found that public authority staff exaggerated the implementation of GPP. A similar study was carried out in 2012 [39]. This was based on a questionnaire to collect information from contracting authorities on the latest contracts signed (2009-2010) for 10 groups of procurement products/services. A total of 18,517 questionnaires were sent out and a total of 856 questionnaires were collected--a 4.6% response rate. As an average percentage for all product groups and for the whole EU, 26% of the contracts were 'green' (i.e., they used all the basic environmental criteria indicated by the EU). This percentage increased to 55% if it was limited to contracts that used at least one of the basic environmental criteria. With regard to the use of environmental criteria in the countries of the European Union, the results show Finland in first place, with a percentage of over 80%. In second place, the Netherlands, Hungary, Lithuania and Latvia, between 60% and 80%. Italy, Austria, Belgium and Romania were between 40% and 60%. Slovenia, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic were between 20% and 40%, and finally, a group of 11 countries with less than 20% (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Poland, Greece, Slovakia, France, Estonia, Malta, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Portugal). Luxembourg did not provide sufficient responses for classification.