Central government procurement totalled around €60 billion (or 2.5 % of GDP) in 2022. The awarding of public procurement contracts is governed by three fundamental principles that structure regulations in this area: equal treatment of candidates, freedom of access to public procurement and transparency of procedures. This emphasis on economic efficiency, which is reflected in the prevalence given to price when selecting service providers, must now be reconciled with other objectives, including sustainability. The National Sustainable Procurement Plan (PNAD) sets two targets for the end of 2025: the first requires 30 % of public procurement contracts notified in the course of a year to include at least one social consideration; the second requires 100 % of public procurement contracts to include at least one environmental consideration. This second objective was enshrined in the Climate and Resilience Act, enacted in 2021, which also requires contracts above European thresholds to
include a social performance condition from August 2026. Against this backdrop, the Court of Accounts wanted to evaluate the actual impact of this new legislative and regulatory framework. It set out to answer three questions.
