3. That the EU make the legislative environment more 'SPP friendly'. Contracting authorities must be allowed to require suppliers to have effective sustainability policies in place. A shift is needed from enabling the Member States to pursue SPP to requiring them to buy sustainably by increasing the amount of mandatory sectoral legislation and by requiring contracting authority to take into account the life-cycle costs associated with their purchases. 1 Non-solution: Simply relying on the goodwill of individual procurement officers or policy makers without providing training and networking opportunities on SPP and information and communication tools; leaving the regulatory burden of pushing SPP forward on the shoulders of Member States. Instruments: The Commission, including DG Devco in its procurement activities in Official Development Assistance (ODA), and other EU institutions should lead by example concerning the professionalisation of procurement officials and the creation of competence centres. The Commission should act as a catalyst for the network of competence centres, and adequate funds should be released to fund the actions recommended under solution point 1 above. The Commission, possibly together with OECD, should collect data on breaches of environmental and social rules, including those protecting human rights, and make that data available to contracting authorities. The other solutions under points 2 and 3 mainly require amendments to Directives 2014/23/EU, 2014/24/EU and 2014/25/EU. Ad hoc rules need to be adopted to enact further sectoral mandatory legislation.1 At the beginning of 2020, in the leaked draft of Communication from the Commission on new Circular Economy Action Plan, the Commission clearly states that the EU public procurement reform 'has not led to sufficient uptake if Green Public Procurement (GPP) yet'. Therefore, the Commission will propose minimum mandatory green criteria and targets for public procurement in key sectors. See: https://www.euractiv.com/section/circulareconomy/news/leak-eus-new-circular-economy-plan-aims-to-halve-waste-by-2030/ Similarly in the recent Communication from the Commission titled: Sustainable Europe Investment Plan, European Green Deal Investment Plan (14 Jan 2020): 'The Commission will propose minimum mandatory green criteria or targets for public procurements in sectorial initiatives, EU funding or product-specific legislation. Such minimum criteria will 'de facto' set a common definition of what a 'green purchase' is, allowing collection of comparable data from public buyers, and setting the basis for assessing the impact of green public procurements. Public authorities across Europe will be encouraged to integrate green criteria and use labels in their procurements. The Commission will support these efforts with guidance, training activities and the dissemination of good practices. At the same time, life-cycle-costing methodologies should be applied by public buyers whenever possible. The Commission calls on all players, including industry, to dev...
as a body of public law in which a safeguard and instrumental role of the law can be identified. The instrumental role of the law refers to the practice of using the law to achieve policy objectives. Needless to say, this area of law has a broad scope which not only includes public procurement law, state aid law and competition law, but also includes, for example, the regulation of utilities markets, intellectual property law or regulation of industry and agriculture. We predominantly consider the EU context. K. Hellingman & K.J.M. Mortelmans, Economisch Publiekrecht: rechtswaarborgen en rechtsinstrumenten (1989). Also see J. Baquero Cruz, Between competition and free movement. The economic constitutional law of the European Union (2002), p. 85. 2 Art. 3(3) of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and Art. 4 of the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC).
How is public engagement perceived to contribute to open science? This commentary highlights common reflections on this question from interviews with 12 public engagement fellows in Utrecht University’s Open Science Programme in the Netherlands. We identify four reasons why public engagement is an essential enabler of open science. Interaction between academics and society can: (1) better align science with the needs of society; (2) secure a relationship of trust between science and society; (3) increase the quality and impact of science; and (4) support the impact of open access and FAIR data practices (data which meet principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability). To be successful and sustainable, such public engagement requires support in skills training and a form of institutionalisation in a university-wide system, but, most of all, the fellows express the importance of a formal and informal recognition and rewards system. Our findings suggest that in order to make public engagement an integral part of open science, universities should invest in institutional support, create awareness, and stimulate dialogue among staff members on how to ‘do’ good public engagement.
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