# Sustainable Public Procurement in Central European Countries. Can It Also Bring Savings?
## 4 Discussion  
From the current selection of data on contracts awarded, we can see considerable untapped potential in the application of MEAT criteria in evaluating tenders in Central Europe and particularly the V4 countries. The original dataset contained more than 700,000 CANs, awarded on the basis of either the lowest price criterion or MEAT. Contracts awarded through MEAT represent approximately 16% of the total number of contracts in the original dataset. This corresponds to the EC's conclusions in the Single Market Scoreboard, where two out of three contracts were awarded on the basis of the lowest price criterion in Central European countries between 2016 and 2018 [40]. Among all Central European countries, Slovakia and the Czech Republic represent the countries with the lowest use of MEAT in the evaluation of offers. The award of contracts on the basis of the lowest price criterion was used in up to 85% of cases on average in the analyzed countries [40]. The results of the current research also show a marginal share of MEAT criteria focused on SPP policy. However, this does not mean that the contracting authorities in Central European countries do not pursue SPP policies. The use of MEAT criteria is only one of the ways to implement environmental, social, or innovation-oriented aspects in public procurement. It should be emphasized that the application of an environmental criterion in technical specifications, for example, or setting specific contract performance conditions, may seem to the contracting authorities to be an easier way than applying different formulas to evaluate the best quality-price ratio. The dominance of social and environmental aspects is probably related to the high level of attention paid to these issues, at both the national and European level. The low share of SPP-oriented criteria within MEAT, as well as the dominance of environmental criteria, correspond to the conclusions of the above-mentioned studies (see e.g., [PERSON] and [PERSON], 2020), according to which the use of MEAT for tender evaluation is not a prerequisite for SPP [8]. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Parameter**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Exp(B)**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Std.**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**95\% Wald Confidence Interval**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Hypothesis Test**} \\  & & **Error** & **Lower** & **Upper** & **Wald Chi-Square** & **df** & **Sig.** \\ \hline (Intercept) & 0.002 & 1.9875 & 5.065 \(\times\)10\({}^{-5}\) & 0.057 & 69.698 & 1 & 0.000 \\ (Type of contract = Services) & 73.267 & 0.7963 & 15.374 & 349.173 & 21.806 & 1 & 0.000 \\ (Type of contract = Utilities) & 2.603 & 0.7850 & 0.560 & 12.099 & 0.047 & 1 & 0.828 \\ (Type of contract = Works) & 1a & - & - & - & - & - & - \\ (Framework agreement = No) & 10.531 & 0.8963 & 8.775 & 12.288 & 138.049 & 1 & 0.000 \\ (Framework agreement = Yes) & 1a & - & - & - & - & - & - \\ (EU Funds = No) & 4.682 & 0.4249 & 2.033 & 10.783 & 16.450 & 1 & 0.000 \\ (EU Funds = Yes) & 1a & - & - & - & - & - & - \\ (Type of procurement = Non Open) & 15.732 & 0.9506 & 2.442 & 101.365 & 14.110 & 1 & 0.004 \\ (Type of procurement = Open) & 1a & - & - & - & - & - & - \\ (Group of suppliers = No) & 4.491 & 0.4001 & 2.047 & 9.855 & 16.079 & 1 & 0.000 \\ (Group of suppliers = Yes) & 1a & - & - & - & - & - & - \\ Number of offers & 3.268 & 0.1222 & 2.579 & 4.141 & 135.421 & 1 & 0.000 \\ Number of offers by SMEs & 1.981 & 0.1352 & 1.520 & 2.582 & 17.581 & 1 & 0.000 \\ (SPP MEAT = NO) & 0.436 & 0.6609 & 0.124 & 1.534 & 3.968 & 1 & 0.046 \\ (SPP MEAT = YES) & 1a & - & - & - & - & - & - \\ (Scale) & 485.724b & 4.0786 & 477.795 & 493.784 & & - & - \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: Regression Analysis. According to the analysis, the use of non-SPP MEATs increases the savings achieved. This can be explained by the different scale of relative weighting of the criteria set by the contracting authorities.