Green public procurement for a sustainable public administration in a resilience context

Green Public Procurement is the approach adopted by Public Administration (PA) that integrate application of environmental criteria and technologies along entire life cycle of the ecological purchasing process. It is a voluntary instrument within the Europe but mandatory in Italy in accordance with article 34 of Law Decree 50/2016 and the new Public Contract Code. Subsequently, in the GPP was integrated the Action Plan for the environmental sustainability of public administration consumption in 2008 which defines national objectives, categories of goods and services, defines the Minimum Environmental Criteria (MEC) and provides guidelines for PA, with the aim of promoting the adoption of the GPP. Moreover, within European member state, the Italian Public Contract Code provides for compliance with public procedures only in the case that such contracts are strictly functional to the core business. The aim of this review is to analyze the difficulties that currently limit the application of GPP especially in Italy, strictly connected to the special sectors of the PA. The authors carried out an analysis of the evolution path of GPP and of the possible solutions that can be adopted to support the integration in the public administration. The result underlined that an important limitation concerns business of public administrations operating in special sectors such as gas, thermal energy, electricity, water, transport, postal services, exploitation of geographical area.