Buying for Social Impact (BSI) is a project commissioned by the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) and the European Commission Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) to promote the use of social considerations in public procurement procedures.
The project has two main objectives:
To encourage contracting authorities to use public procurement to pursue social goals;
To increase the capacity of social economy enterprises to take part in public procurement procedures and to access new markets.
Following the latest major overhaul of the EU procurement framework in 2014, all public authorities across Europe may use public procurement to pursue social objectives. But in practice, many public buyers do not dare to, or do not know how to proceed. Public procurement remains a largely untapped source of growth for social economy enterprises.
BSI informd authorities and suppliers in 15 EU countries about social considerations in purchasing procedures by raising awareness, and by providing training to contracting authorities and suppliers to the public sector. The main targets of the project are public buyers and social economy enterprises.
The work of BSI is divided into two strands:
Knowledge development through desk research on: how the new public procurement directive has been transposed at national level, identification of good practices showcasing how the social aspects of the directive can be implemented in practice, and a mapping of the capacity of social economy enterprises in accessing markets.
Knowledge sharing and exchange through the organisation of awareness raising and training events in 15 EU countries (Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden).
