The Barriers to Green Public Procurement: Analysis of Four “Post-Socialist” Countries

ABSTRACT

The amount of academic literature related to green procurement is steadily growing. However, the number of relevant articles in the “post-socialist” region is still minimal, and existing articles focus mainly on the situation of the current European Union. Our goal was to investigate the barriers to green public procurement in two “pairs” of “post-socialist” countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia as developed countries and Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan as developing countries), establish any region-specific features related to them, and deliver relevant policy lessons. Our analysis confirms the already existing “mainstream” opinion related to the investigated region: national legislation includes relevant provisions, and in some cases, it even promotes the use of green public procurement. However, the actual scale of green public procurement is still very marginal. The article confirms the existence of all types of “standard” barriers in the region, but its specific contribution highlights the region’s specificity.

KEYWORDS:

• Green public procurement
• Czech Republic
• Slovakia
• Kyrgyzstan
• Uzbekistan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was prepared with the support of the project [VEGA 1/0029/21] Management of contracting services in the public sector.