To avoid frozen chicken thighs imported from distant countries in school canteens after the exclusion of local producers from calls for tenders, a parliamentary report submitted to the government on Wednesday advocates a reform of public procurement.
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“Public procurement has long been viewed as an administrative, legal and budgetary process, and not as a strategic economic policy tool. However, it represents 8% of GDP, or some 200 billion euros, ”
said Minister of Industry Agnès Pannier-Runacher, receiving the report on Wednesday.
“It is a lever that other countries use very well to build an economic policy, also to build a strategy of environmental transformation. Not using it is a mistake, ”
she stressed. One of the challenges of a reform would be
"in particular to allow SMEs and VSEs to have access to public orders"
, estimated the Minister.
The report, written by the senator of Finistère Nadège Havet and the deputy of Haute-Vienne Sophie Beaudouin-Hubière, formulates 46 recommendations to make public procurement
"more responsible"
. While a number of French companies which began to manufacture masks during the pandemic regularly lose public tenders, in the armies or hospitals, in the face of low-cost Asian imports, the report notably advocates including
" social, environmental and inclusive criteria ”
, and not the only price criterion. It also suggests evaluating the
“positive externalities of public
procurement
”
(economic but also environmental gains) by developing full cost analysis grids for projects.
"It hurts the economy"
"I'm not naive about the deviations that we can experience"
sometimes in public procurement,
"but I also know to what extent, for reasons of legal certainty and protection, we sometimes take a solution that is not French , which is not the best from the point of view of quality, and which is not the most durable, but being the cheapest, we are sure that we will not be attacked ”
said Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
"It is extremely frustrating, it hurts the economy of our country."
she estimated.
“Public procurement is a transversal subject, too often felt as complex. Our objective, throughout this mission, has been to make concrete recommendations for all stakeholders. And with the will, in a context of support and recovery, to make it a lever for the recovery of our economy by facilitating local and sustainable purchasing
,
”said
the two authors of the report, quoted in a press release.
The report was requested at the end of February by Prime Minister Jean Castex.
