The meeting was held on 7 June (Friday) in the meeting room of Stara Zagora Regional Economic Development Agency (SZREDA). The meeting was attended by representatives of the Executive Environment Agency, the Stara Zagora Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Green Balkans and the Bulgarian Recycling Association.
During the meeting, Venelin Dobrev from SZREDA presented a presentation of the GPP4Growth project, the problems with the project, the goals for their solution and the achievements so far. The team of SZREDA answered all the questions that were asked during the meeting.
Potential recommendations for measures were divided into three different categories based on their approach to public administration and business:
• Recommendations for measures that will address the need for more information on green public procurement for both public administration and business.
• Recommendations for measures that will be stimulating for the administration.
• Recommendations for measures addressing the issue of administrative capacity in both business and public administrations, which concerns the participation in green public procurement.
All measures are still in conceptual ideas, which should be discussed with relevant experts from the public, non-governmental and private sectors. Specific good practice that has been discussed is the possibility that the savings made by a contracting authority by awarding green public procurement contracts will be left in the budget of the institution and used in the direction of other green solutions. Representatives of Green Balkans provided a developed methodology as a recommendation regarding the removal of endangered species from multifamily buildings to be rehabilitated.
Each topic will be discussed with the relevant stakeholder group and will be discussed in separate discussions. All measures are to be codified into proposals that will lead to a more effective implementation of Green Public Procurement.
All stakeholders confirmed their readiness to attend the forthcoming final sixth stakeholder meeting.
