Sustainable Procurement is a process by which public authorities or private corporations seek to achieve the appropriate balance between financial, environmental and social considerations when procuring goods, services or works at all stages of the value transformation cycle, taking into account their costs through the entire life-cycle. Such considerations pertain, for instance, to the respect of core labor and safety standards in the production process, and the energy efficiency performance and innovative characteristics of the purchased products. Sustainable procurement is rapidly increasing, as international, regional and national entities are establishing ambitious policy objectives in this regard. In the European Union for example, where public procurement amounts to 17% of countries’ GDP on average, Member States have been required to achieve a share of 50% of public tenders including environmental criteria in more than 20 priority product and services categories, including lighting, textile, food, paper, office building design construction and management. 
Demonstrating compliance with sustainability considerations may introduce however additional administrative burdens to trade across border, particularly for small-medium enterprise suppliers when, participating in international tenders, are requested to proof compliance with specific environmental and social regulations, norms and standards. It becomes therefore relevant to facilitate these companies in their compliance with these sustainability matters. The facilitation of international sustainable procurement practices look at how procedures and controls governing the movement of goods across national borders can be improved to reduce associated costs and maximise efficiency while safeguarding legitimate regulatory objectives, which could be resolved by implementing processes and practices that: 1) Simplify the exchange of information and data once compliance is ensured; 2) Enable fast transfer of certificates; 3) Allow for electronic smooth tendering; 4) Support the legal validity of the documents exchanged; 5) Streamline the procedures between the contracting entity and the tenderer.

The scope of this project is to identify policies, standards and good practices for sustainable procurement, and their impact on trade facilitation. The project will collect best practices that provide guidance and support for financially sound, environmentally sustainable and socially responsible procurement in B2G and B2B. The project also identifies common requirements and provides recommendations as to their use in such a way to minimize administrative burdens and facilitate cross border trade and access of transition and developing economies to procurement opportunities worldwide, in line with both the WTO Government Procurement Agreement and the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement.