With estimated 50 billion Euros of annual expenditures, the state North Rhine-Westphalia has enormous market power. Increasing requirements for sustainability in tendering procedures have already shown some positive effects. At the same time, there is still considerable room for improvement when it comes to considering social and environmental factors.

On 7 July representatives of the research and transfer network on sustainable public procurement in North Rhine-Westphalia met with practitioners to discuss potentials for improvement in the topic area (members of the network: BICC, DIE, H-BRS, IFH Köln, newtrade nrw, WI, ZEF). At the beginning, the approximately 40 participants from science, public and private sector as well as the NGO sphere were welcomed by Dirk Messner, director of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), and Lale Akgün, head of newtrade nrw. After that, the field of sustainable public procurement was examined in the course of input lectures from three different perspectives - the public sector (Ilse Beneke, Kompetenzstelle für nachhaltige Beschaffung, Federal Ministry of the Interior), the private economy (Gerhard Becker, MaxTex) and the NGO side (Gisela Burckhardt and Marie-Luise Lämmle, FEMNET e.V.). In the following world-café-session of the workshop, the participants discussed essential questions surrounding sustainable public procurement, for instance drivers and barriers in public awarding offices or sustainability challenges in particular relevant product groups.

Thus, by inducing an exchange with practitioners the workshop generated crucial inputs to ensure both a scientific sophisticated and practice-oriented academic focus of the research and transfer network in the upcoming months. Beyond, the event also served as starting point to build up a vibrant and broad platform for dialogue.