Small and medium-sized companies are disadvantaged when participating in public tenders

Sustainability aspects in public tenders should be implemented in an SME-friendly manner

“In principle, it is to be welcomed that the federal government wants to amend public procurement with the aim of making it more efficient and sustainable. But the consequences for small and medium-sized companies should be taken into account,” explains Dr. Nadine Schlömer Laufen, project manager at the Institute for SME Research (IfM) Bonn. Your research team evaluated statements from a public consultation by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection and carried out an extensive literature analysis. It became apparent that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular experience obstacles in every phase of the procurement process – from the search for suitable tenders to the submission of offers. This often leads to SMEs foregoing participation in public tenders in individual cases, despite their fundamental interest in them.

The IfM team of scientists identified the biggest hurdles as a lack of information from the awarding bodies and difficult contact options, poor user-friendliness on the digital platforms, excessively high requirements of the tender and excessive bureaucracy. If sustainable procurement were also strengthened through public procurement, this would further increase both the requirements and the bureaucratic effort for SMEs. Both are already perceived as too high. However, in order to ensure legally secure, sustainable awarding, the awarding authority must place appropriate requirements on bidders and require evidence from the bidders.

In order not to further increase the hurdles for SMEs, the IfM scientists believe that the planned amendment should take place in two stages: First, the existing obstacles for SMEs in the procurement process should be reduced – and only then should public procurement be made more sustainable .

“An alternative to the two-stage implementation of the amendment could also be to strengthen sustainable procurement, but waive the requirement for additional evidence. In this way, the bureaucratic burden and requirements for SMEs would be prevented from increasing further. This would make award decisions less legally certain. However, the example of other countries with innovative public procurement shows that this approach can be a working model,” said Dr. Nadine Schlömer-Laufen.

Source: Institute for SME Research Bonn