Promoting green public procurement in Hungary, with focus on life-cycle costing

The Commission supports the Hungarian Government in developing and promoting the use of green public procurement criteria, and especially of Life-Cycle Costing (LCC) tools. This support includes the development of product-specific LCC tools that are easy to use and accessible as well as the promotion of the adopted tools and other possibilities for incorporating environmental criteria into public procurement.

Context

In Hungary, the use of green criteria in public procurement procedures is quite limited and specifically the life-cycle costing (LCC) methods is used very rarely, despite the enabling policy and regulatory environment in place. The main obstacle to the greater uptake of green criteria and specifically LCC is the lack of competence within contracting authorities in defining meaningful green criteria and conducting LCC. The use of LCC tools is perceived to be burdensome and complicated. In addition, Hungarian contracting authorities do not approach costs in a systematic manner. They focus almost exclusively on the “purchase price” (initial costs). Another important barrier to the spread of LCC tools, and in general, to apply green criteria on a wider basis, is the general perception that green products are more expensive than ordinary goods.

Support delivered

The ongoing project aims to promote the uptake of green public procurement in Hungary and the wider use of life cycle costing tools in public procurement. The OECD mapped existing LCC tools in other EU Member States and the current practices on the use of LCC in Hungary. It also identified the purchasing categories for the product specific LCC tools, and now develops product specific LCC tools for selected purchasing categories. The OECD will also promote the developed tools through workshops

Results achieved

By implementing the project public procurement will be more environmentally friendly by using life cycle costing tools to consider the environmental impacts of products throughout their life cycle. There is now also a Green Public Procurement Strategy in place to help guide public procurement in Hungary towards more sustainable practices, and a number of contracting authorities will be trained in how to use life cycle costing tools.