Are EU institutions still green actors? An empirical study of green public procurement

Abstract

Analysing the environmental actorness of the EU, more than one voice has spoken of the myth of a Green Europe and a dismantling process of its environmental ambitions. To date, any attempt to quantify this in a homogeneous fashion by different levels of government and institutions has run into serious difficulties. This research, however, uses green public procurement (GPP) as the research instrument to quantify the commitment to environmental policies. We construct the database from tenders published in the Supplement to the Official Journal between 2009 and 2019. Based on more than 743,061 observations, the article finds that the EU's institutions have the lowest GPP adoption rates in relation to all other levels of government. Moreover, it also records marked differences between the EU institutions where the European Parliament is performing better than the European Commission and, during Juncker Commission, EC performs worse.