Social responsible procurement

When procuring goods and services, governments apply competitive tendering as an instrument to achieve all kinds of additional policy objectives. One can think of objectives related to social and environmental sustainability, including the protection of human rights. It is left to the governments’ discretion how to pursue these goals. Public procurement law, however, requires governments to secure that competition is fair. This project investigates the relationship between social responsible public procurement on the one hand and (the regulation of) the competitive tendering of public contracts on the other. The purpose is to contribute to a legal framework facilitating social responsible public procurement.