Procurement is no longer solely about lowest cost or highest quality, it’s increasingly tasked with delivering social value: generating employment, driving inclusion, supporting local SMEs, and promoting decent work conditions. But how effectively are public authorities across the EU, and in Ireland, embedding these goals without legal risk or hollow rhetoric?
This article explores the legal foundations, practical tools, case studies, and the challenges of implementing socially responsible procurement across Europe.
The Legal Foundation for Social Procurement in the EU
The EU’s Directive 2014/24/EU provides the formal legal basis for embedding social objectives directly into procurement. Under Article 18(2) (the “social and environmental clause”), buyers must exclude bidders who breach labour laws or collective agreements and may use award criteria or contract performance clauses to pursue social goals.
Article 20 explicitly allows contracting authorities to integrate social considerations into tendering: for instance, prioritising disability employment, inclusive practices, or community benefit clauses. However, legal ambiguity remains, for example, around minimum wage requirements and cross-border compatibility, so the use of social criteria requires considerable planning and a clear, well-defined purpose.
The European Commission’s “Buying Social” guide offers practical advice across the procurement cycle, highlighting good practices: using exclusion, selection, award and performance clauses, and avoiding discrimination across Member States.
Tools and Strategy in Ireland
Ireland is forging ahead. The Office of Government Procurement (OGP) has published guidance on Socially Responsible Public Procurement (SRPP), emphasizing procurement’s potential to improve societal outcomes beyond price and quality.
OGP, in collaboration with the European Commission and key stakeholders under the Public Procurement Dialogues project, published Ireland’s Strategic Public Procurement Roadmap in early 2025. This roadmap enshrines social, green, and innovation objectives into procurement policy design, guided by public consultation and best practice benchmarking.
Moreover, Ireland is piloting social procurement in rural regeneration: tenders that mandate job creation in disadvantaged areas, as part of broader strategy to reverse urban decline, demonstrating locally tailored SRPP use.
An illustrative case is the Circular Computing framework: Irish public bodies are buying remanufactured laptops under “Buying Greener” mandates. This combines environmental and social goals, minimising waste, supporting sustainable sourcing, and indirectly benefiting local economy through social enterprises.
Social Value in Practice: UK & Northern Ireland Examples
In the UK, the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 first required public bodies to ‘have regard to’ wider wellbeing in service contracts, though without binding metrics or enforcement.
The Procurement Act 2023, in force from early 2025, goes further: social value is central to the National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS), applied across contract award and delivery phases. Authorities are now required to maintain social value commitments throughout the life of the contract, even measuring outcomes, to gain contract extensions or bonuses.
Northern Ireland has gone a step further: Social Value policy mandates a minimum 10% weighting for social value in tender evaluations. It supports defined themes, such as employment, ethical supply chains, climate action, and community wellbeing, with structured toolkits for both procurement bodies and suppliers.
Designing Social Procurement Without Legal Pitfalls
Knowing the legal limits is essential:
- Exclusion criteria can target bidders violating social or labour law, including supply chain abuses, but must be clearly referenced to enforceable national or EU rules, to avoid discriminatory barriers.
- Selection criteria can evaluate a bidder’s experience delivering social outcomes or their corporate policies supporting inclusion or fair labour practices.
- Award criteria may allocate up to 15% weighting to social value, provided these criteria relate to contract performance and are specified transparently upfront.
- Contract performance clauses can link payment or extension to measurable delivery, such as hours worked by targeted groups, or timely payment to subcontractors, including SMEs. The latter is vital to prevent cascading delays or abuses in ethical supply chains.
Best practice demands third-party certifications or labels (e.g. social enterprise accreditation), expert evaluators, and post-award monitoring. Frameworks should not mandate local content across borders as this may violate EU non-discrimination principles.
Measuring Impact & Key Challenges
According to the OECD’s case study on Ireland, procurement can become more strategic when outcomes are tracked and aligned with policy: inclusion, SME growth, digital transformation, and carbon reduction are measurable targets, but uptake is uneven.
Common challenges include:
- Verifiability: Social targets can be vague; without standard metrics or audits, claims remain unverified.
- Market readiness: In less mature supplier ecosystems, meeting social or environmental thresholds may limit competition.
- Resource constraints: Smaller contracting authorities lack legal or evaluation capacity to implement SRPP fully.
- Legal anxiety: Fear of challenge under EU procurement law leads many buyers to avoid or water down social clauses unnecessarily.
Social procurement works best when supported by central guidance, shared templates, and training, as in NI or via the EC’s guide, with clear, consistent frameworks across authorities.
Recommendations for Procurement Professionals
For those leading procurement in Ireland and Europe:
- Use the EUsanctioned toolkit: Apply exclusion, selection, award, and performance clauses as allowed under Directive 2014/24/EU and guided by the EC’s “Buying Social” manual.
- Measure real impact: Set SMART social KPIs linked to outcomes, job placement, SME engagement, fair labour compliance, and monitor them in contract delivery.
- Facilitate supplier inclusion: Structure DPSs or multi-lot tenders accessible to social enterprises and SMEs; allow consortia when necessary.
- Train evaluators: Ensure your evaluation panels include experts in social policy and use third-party certifications when rating social value claims.
- Share and align: Learn from NI and UK models; use national strategy roadmaps, notably Ireland’s, to align procurement design with policy objectives.
Procurement can actively deliver social value, but only when designed, awarded, and monitored with precision, integrity and accountability. Embedding social clauses is more than virtue signalling, it’s a strategic tool to rebuild communities, support vulnerable populations, spark inclusion, and strengthen ethical markets across Europe.
Source:
Directive 2014/24/EU, Articles 18(2) and 20 (“social and environmental clause”)
OGP Ireland: Socially Responsible Public Procurement guidance
