Miljöhänsyn vid tilldelning av kontrakt i offentlig upphandling

Sammanfattning: Public procurement is a sector that turns over huge amounts of money. In 2012 this sector was valued at 625 billion SEK in Sweden. At EU level the scale of public procurement has been noticed by the EU-commission as something that can be used to create a more sustainable Europe. To achieve this EU wants to increase the possibilities for the member states to use environmentally adapted public procurement. The aim with this essay is to investigate how environmental criteria should be formed to be compatible with union law. In the essay there will also be an analysis of how far reaching the criteria can be. In 2014 EU issued a new directive that regulates procurement rules. The new directive abolishes the old procurement directive on which the Swedish procurement law is built on but no new procurement law has been issued by Swedish authorities. For that reason the new directives impact on environmental award criteria will also be looked at. For the most part of the essay an EU-law method will be used and within this mostly cases from the EU-court will be used to determine what the applicable law is. To determine how far-reaching award criteria that can be used, material from the procurement committee will be used along with articles on the subject. In relation to the questions at issue the following can be concluded. It is possible for a contracting authority to use environmental criteria as award criteria as long as the comply with the basic principals of union law and they also has to meet the criteria in the Concordia-case. How far-reaching criteria’s that can be set is dependent by which of the innermarket- or the multipolicyperspective you favor. Where the later one can be used to justify more far-reaching award criteria. It should be said though that these are just assessments of EU-court cases and that the court has not yet delivered a clear answer to the question. Regarding the new directive the Swedish public procurement authority says that this will not alter the possibility to use award criteria.