Research for the project Buying for social impact: Good practice from around the EU

Buying for Social Impact (BSI) was 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 in 15 EU Member States. The project had 2 objectives:
– to encourage contracting authorities to use public procurement to pursue social goals; and
– to increase the capacity of social economy enterprises to take part in public procurement procedures and to access new markets.

Agnese Frīdenberga and Kristībe Gaigule – Šāvēja were local experts and prepared an overview on situation in Latvia. The main tasks for local experts were to prepare an information about how social economy organizations can be involved in public procurement procedures, what are existing practice, how EU directive on public procurement is transposed to Latvia legislation, are public buyers aware and ready to include social clauses in public procurement procedures. The research found that there are social enterprises in Latvia, some of them have interest to participate in public procurement procedures, but public buyers do not use social clauses in public procurement procedures.

Research paper is available here.