Abstrakt

Public Procurement Law, European Commission and Court of European Justice: guidelines for a definition of socially responsible public procurement (SRPP)  The contribution offered by certain European documents, especially of soft law, allows to locate a policy of promoting the c.d. Buying Social, within which Member States are urged to introduce, in the tender procedure, rules that give relevance to c.d. ‘Social clauses’.  A recent guide, adopted by the European Commission, employs, in fact, the expression ‘Buying social’ to indicate the possibility for governments to come «to procurement operations that take into account one or more of the following social considerations: employment opportunities, decent work, compliance with social and labor rights, social inclusion (including persons with disabilities), equal opportunities, accessibility design for all, taking account of sustainability criteria, including ethical trade issues and wider voluntary compliance with corporate social responsibility (CSR), while observing the principles enshrined in the Treaty for the European Union (TFEU) and the Procurement Directives».  The generic term ‘social aspects’, referring to the matter of public contracts firstly by the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union1, and subsequently developed first with some communications of the European Commission in 20012 and then with the Directives 2004/17/EC3 and 2004/18/EC4, has over time acquired an increasingly important 12legal meaning, so as to enable public administrations to contribute indirectly to the promotion of social development.  By the purchase of goods, which could be called ‘socially relevant’, the government is in line with broader objectives of social cohesion counted, moreover, between the pillars of the European integration process, with the Charter of Fundamental Rights, especially after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon.  It outlines a direct impact of these choices on the social economic situation of public procurements. The public administration, actually, ends up with the same policies affect the production of enterprises, directing them to invest in ‘social aspects’ of its business and scoring the final abandon of an essential and exclusive concept in the past, namely the economic interest which primary and absolute objective in the issue of public procurement.  The most recent evolution of European law in this matter, to which Directive 24/2014 is the last step, transcends, therefore, the original perspective, purely...