Sustainable public procurement best practices at sub-national level: drivers of strategic public procurement practices in Catalonia and Barcelona

The strategic use of public procurement across the European Union to contribute to sustainable development has been underdeveloped and unequally distributed among the EU Member States, with seven Member States being sustainable public procurement leaders, and the rest of the Member States having a very modest sustainable public procurement uptake. While Spain has not been one of the best performers, the outstanding Catalan performance as a Spanish autonomous community calls for the analysis of the driving factors that enabled a high sustainable public procurement uptake at the regional and local level. The present article explores the policy coherence, the accompanying legal framework and the supporting activities that have been carried out in Catalonia to incorporate green public procurement as the default procurement option at the regional and local level to serve as a potential model for a transition towards green public procurement for other regional and local procurement authorities.The research was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 789461 (SCOM Project – Sustainable Company)