Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SAPIENS (Sustainability And Procurement in International, European, and National Systems)
Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2025-02-28
Public authorities in Europe are major buyers of goods and services, with public procurement (PP) accounting for approximately €1.8 trillion annually—around 14% of the EU’s gross domestic product. Governed by national, EU, and international legal frameworks, PP is increasingly recognised not only as a tool for efficient public spending, but also as a powerful policy lever for achieving broader societal goals. Sustainable public procurement (SPP), which integrates social and environmental considerations into purchasing decisions, allows contracting authorities (CAs) to drive demand for responsible business practices, green technologies, and products with a lower environmental footprint. As such, SPP contributes directly to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), promoting social justice, human rights, and environmental sustainability.
The Sustainability and Procurement in International, European, and National Systems (SAPIENS) project was launched to respond to the growing need for interdisciplinary research into the role of PP—particularly SPP—in addressing the complex challenges of the 21st century. The overarching objective of the project was to build a significantly enhanced European knowledge base and research capacity around the legal, economic, and business dimensions of SPP. Through this, SAPIENS aimed to support Europe’s transition toward more sustainable and inclusive public sector practices.
SAPIENS addressed this challenge by: i) fostering interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration between world-leading academic experts in Law, Economics, and Management; ii) partnering with key public and private stakeholders, including international organisations, central purchasing bodies, contracting authorities, R&D centres, and civil society actors; iii) training a new generation of specialists capable of navigating the legal, economic, and institutional dimensions of SPP; iv) supporting the uptake and practical implementation of SPP across Europe through the development of open-access tools, training materials, and policy-oriented outputs.
By the end of the Action, SAPIENS had made significant contributions to the emergence of SPP as a recognised sub-discipline within sustainability studies. It helped bridge the gap between research and practice, expanded the pool of trained professionals in the field, and created resources to support the continued mainstreaming of SPP in public sector decision-making. As such, the project delivered on its ambition to strengthen Europe's capacity to address pressing social and environmental challenges through sustainable public procurement.
The Sustainability and Procurement in International, European, and National Systems (SAPIENS) project was launched to respond to the growing need for interdisciplinary research into the role of PP—particularly SPP—in addressing the complex challenges of the 21st century. The overarching objective of the project was to build a significantly enhanced European knowledge base and research capacity around the legal, economic, and business dimensions of SPP. Through this, SAPIENS aimed to support Europe’s transition toward more sustainable and inclusive public sector practices.
SAPIENS addressed this challenge by: i) fostering interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration between world-leading academic experts in Law, Economics, and Management; ii) partnering with key public and private stakeholders, including international organisations, central purchasing bodies, contracting authorities, R&D centres, and civil society actors; iii) training a new generation of specialists capable of navigating the legal, economic, and institutional dimensions of SPP; iv) supporting the uptake and practical implementation of SPP across Europe through the development of open-access tools, training materials, and policy-oriented outputs.
By the end of the Action, SAPIENS had made significant contributions to the emergence of SPP as a recognised sub-discipline within sustainability studies. It helped bridge the gap between research and practice, expanded the pool of trained professionals in the field, and created resources to support the continued mainstreaming of SPP in public sector decision-making. As such, the project delivered on its ambition to strengthen Europe's capacity to address pressing social and environmental challenges through sustainable public procurement.
SAPIENS has created a unique working environment for cross sector and multidisciplinary research, providing the ESRs with the scientific, technical and transferable skills necessary to improve their career perspective and employability through local and network-wide training, and secondments providing them with first-hand experience on Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) applied research. 15 early-stage researchers were successfully appointed within the first 12 months of the Action. The inaugural meeting in Turin in September 2021 with the recruited ESRs and Lead Researchers started an intense training phase with ATC1 on Procurement and Sustainability & Soft Skills for ESRs followed by ATC2 on Sustainable Public Procurement and the Circular Economy in Hasselt in December 2021, ATC3 on Actors in Developing SPP Rules and Best Practices in Rome in April 2022, ATC4 on Sustainability Assessment, Tools and Procedures in Gavle in June 2022, the Summer School in Cluj Napoca in July 2022 and ATC5 on Sustainability in the Supply Chain in Lodz in October 2022. Moreover, project meetings and supervisory board meetings were held regularly on a 6-month basis. This was complemented by the internal training activities of the beneficiaries. An additional ATC6 on Policy advice, outreach & dissemination held in Copenhagen in September 2023 and the Final Network Conference in June 2024 in Birmingham completed the training programme. In 2022, the ESRs started their secondment programmes with some deviations from Annex 1 and completed all planned secondments by the end of the Action. The ESRs and their supervisors have comprehensively participated and presented their research and the SAPIENS Network in more than 180 external events, reaching a varied audience across many countries already. Collaborations with several associations, European or international organisations and research centres have been established or strengthened. To date, the fellows have published more than 32 open access papers.
SAPIENS’ direct impact is the creation of a unique European and international knowledge base and research capacity on SPP, thus contributing significantly to efforts towards achieving the SDGs by (a) advancing the state of the art in research on SPP, (b) by creating connecting bridges between industry, academic, NGOs and other stakeholders working on SPP, and (c) by setting the ground for future collaborative patterns in the very interdisciplinary field of SPP. SAPIENS has four key areas of impact: 1) on the ESRs, their skills, and future career prospects; 2) on the development of a strongly linked interdisciplinary academic community with specialised knowledge of SPP; 3) on the European research and policy agendas on SPP and the implementation of SDGs and their targets; and 4) more broadly, on awareness of both stakeholders, including Contracting Authorities, and the public of the potential of SPP to contribute in addressing the most pressing issues our society is facing and in achieving the SDGs. SAPIENS has already facilitated new collaborations and aims at building partnerships beyond the network’s lifetime further strengthening academic and applied research involving the Partner Organisations with the effect to facilitate further developments in the uptake of SPP. It has achieved its aim by training a cohort of 15 ESRs with the specialised skills required to work, by pursuing a rigorous and multi-layered public engagement strategy. SAPIENS also addressed a scientific gap, by integrating SPP within the field of sustainability studies. As the 2017 Global Review of SPP recognises, in order to transform production and consumption patterns, it is necessary to foster collaboration among stakeholders throughout the entire value chain. The creation of multi-stakeholder collaboration and knowledge-sharing platforms at local, national and international level is essential to achieving this goal. The research of the SAPIENS training network has developed results and findings which can be exploited for further research, by training and providing open access to SPP materials and tools for wider use. Coherently with its specifically interdisciplinary nature, the exploitation translates itself mainly into policy actions and practice tools used by the beneficiaries, the partner organisations and the wider public procurement community well beyond the end of the project.