Environmental criteria in the public purchases above the EU threshold values by three Nordic countries: 2003 and 2005

Green Public Procurement (GPP) has been considered as an important policy instrument in the context of sustainable consumption and production. The state and progress of GPP has earlier been measured by questionnaires and interviews, both methods being based on the assessment by the purchaser, and questionnaires having low response rates. Recently, a new method was developed, analyzing the existence of environmental criteria in the calls for tenders. However, the studies have dealt neither with the progress in GPP, nor the statistical evidence of differences between countries. Our aim was to analyze more thoroughly whether the differences in the proportions of ‘green’ calls for tenders between the three Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, in 2003 and 2005 were real, and whether there had occurred any progress between the years concerned. The paper also presents the ‘GPP-record’ method, which enables more valid measurement of the environmental soundness of public purchasing. The statistical analyses were done using logit models with country, year and product group as the explanatory factors. It proved to be relevant to take into account the variation that occurred from the random existence of product groups in the samples of calls for tender. There were less environmental criteria in the calls for tenders in Finland than in Denmark and Sweden in 2003, but in 2005 no significant difference between Finland and Denmark was observed. Both Finland and Sweden saw progress in this area between 2003 and 2005.