Brussels hosted last March a meeting of experts and stakeholders in public procurement and innovation in Europe. They have now been published on the website of DG Enterprise of the European Commission.

More than 150 experts got together in Brussels during two days, taking part at the Conference "Promoting Innovation Through Public Procurement: Best Practice and Networking" organized by the Directorate General for Industry and Entrepreneurship of the European Commission on March 23rd and 24th.

Public procurement accounts for some 16% of GDP in the European Union and offers an enormous potential market for innovative products and services. For spending on construction this figure reaches 40% and for defence, civil security and emergency operations almost 100%.

The European Commission has set the target to dedicate 1% of the total amount of commercial opportunities channelled through public tendering in the EU to public procurement of innovation, which represents around 20B€ per year. This target is modest when compared with US target of around 15% or the even higher target of 40% set by China, but, according to experts opinion, this is an important step and a good beginning.

Issues such as public contracting authorities' aversion to risk when facing procurement of innovation, their responsibility in those processes when something goes wrong, legal issues, fragmentation of demand or issues related to IP rights on procurement of innovation were some of the interesting ideas which came up at the Conference.

In any case, the main issues of the conference were:

• Pre-commercial Procurement, as a way to stimulate public tendering of innovation
• Green Public Procurement
• e-Procurement
• Social considerations, variants or technical dialogue in public procurement.

The presentations exposed during the conference can now be downloaded from the website of DG Enterprise and Industry of the Commission, the body responsible for the organization of this event.