Public procurement plays a crucial strategic role in a country's economy and in delivering quality services to its citizens. However, it is also susceptible to risks of fraud and corruption due to the significant financial flows involved. In 2022, public procurement in Greece represented approximately 12% of the country's GDP and accounted for 23% of total government expenditures. The COVID-19 crisis exacerbated the risk of integrity violations and increased incidents of fraud and corruption, particularly within the realm of public procurement. Greece's ranking on the Corruption Perceptions Index for 2022 was 51st out of 180 countries, indicating a need for improvement. Additionally, a significant majority of respondents (98%) in the 2022 Special Eurobarometer believed that corruption was widespread in Greece, well above the EU average of 68%. The National Strategy for Public Procurement (NSPP) 2021-2025 includes a comprehensive set of actions to promote transparency through specified auditing procedures in public procurement and achieve a high level of professionalization. DG REFORM, through the Technical Support Instrument (TSI), will support the Greek National Transparency Authority (NTA) in achieving strategic priorities of NSPP 2021-2025, namely establishing an integrated risk management framework, strengthening audits and fostering integrity in PP practitioners. The project will be provided by OECD and its key outputs will be:

• A Risk management framework for public procurement and practical tools for its successful implementation;
• A Risk-based methodology for auditing in public procurement supported by training materials and workshops;
• A Code of Conduct/deontology to enhance integrity amongst public procurement practitioners;
• Specialised integrity training and training materials for public procurement practitioners.

Lead Beneficiary: National Transparency Authority (NTA). Contractor: OECD  European Commission: DG REFORM.B2

In CircularPSP leading circular cities are to procure innovative solutions to overcome organisational, informational and operational barriers of municipalities to transition towards a Circular Economy. The project will contribute to this public buyers community on three levels:

• Experience into organisation and implementation of joint innovation procurement 
• Access to solutions helping cities to avoid procurement where possible and prepare circular procurements
• Application of the Procurement Clauses of AI (light version) developed by the community 

PPI4cities intends to support the cities in BSR region to improve their public services and achieve their ambitious innovation goals through developing pragmatic tools, which would facilitate the uptake of public procurement of innovation. There are so many innovations that can be implemented to make urban life easier. Therefore, project intends to support cities throughout the process to deal with different economic, environmental and social challenges and look for the smart solutions to them. It will do so by bringing together a portfolio of capacity building material and tools that enable the various actors of the cities to exploit structured content and move forward faster and with greater confidence and certainty in adopting smart cities' solutions through PPI. It will also act as a network of BSR cities, for cities, dedicated to public procurement of innovation.

The project aims to facilitate the identification of public innovation needs, conduct market consultations to identify market capabilities and potential solutions, and help public buyers tap into the innovative capacity of SMEs. The project will enhance the capacity of Public Authorities to engage in cross-border PPI for circular solutions and establish a focal point for engagement between Europe’s leading innovation ecosystems and ambitious public authorities interested in leveraging cross- border PPI to accelerate the circular economy.

P5 Innobroker stands for “Public Private Partnership for Public Procurement" of Innovation within the Innobroker Model. It expresses the goal to further develop, accelerate, deploy, validate and demonstrate a self-sustainable EU-wide B2G Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) brokerage service ecosystem-based business model and platform (Innobroker) for mobilizing and bringing together early adopter public buyers and leading-edge EU SMEs and start-ups as well as to pave the way for the implementation of an effective, collaborative/coordinated set of transnational SMEs/start-up-oriented PPI bids through a Public-Private Partnership PPI Facilitator Business Model (P5 Innovation Procurement broker).

ProCirc is set up to experiment, implement and learn how circular economy and procurement can benefit the region. To fully benefit from circular opportunities and to contribute to the international development of circular economy, ProCirc conducts and supports 30 pilots to demonstrate procurement opportunities. Each pilot aims to reduce 20-25% raw materials, waste and CO2 emissions. Insights and tools regarding specific sectors like construction, furniture and ICT will be disseminated in the North Sea region by creating an active transnational network on the topic.

Impact

Procuring organisations can stimulate circular economy using their demand to change markets. This will not only have a direct impact on the business models; innovation and economic opportunities that suppliers will create, but also on decreasing carbon emissions and the use of resources and closing product and material loops.

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InnoBuyer is a project that aims to become a testing ground and benchmark towards the implementation of a demand-driven methodology that brings together public and private organisations (Challengers) and innovative companies (Solvers) to jointly co-create innovative solutions, and speed-up the process leading to a concrete innovation procurement. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement 101071212.