On December 11, 2018 the fifth Austrian stekholderworkshop was organised. The topic of the Workshop was green public procurement. Stakeholders from different areas were invited: federal procurement agency, the Ministry of Sustainability and Tourism who is in charge of the national action plan for green public procurement, Austrian Federal Railways, federal real estate agency as well as experts from the Environment Agency Austria.
Three questions were discussed:
• What role do environmental management systems like EMAS play in green public procurement?
• What are the challenges for green procurement in general and for the consideration of environmental management systems in particular?
• What kind of support is needed to take environmental management systems such as EMAS more into account in public procurement?
Also, the Ministry of Sustainability and Tourism presented the action plan for green public procurement which was established in 2010. The action plan will be revised in the spring of 2019 which is a good opportunity to include improvements for EMAS organisations. Thus, the possible wording of the action plan was discussed.
