The Adoption and Promotion of Environment Protection in Government Procurement: A Comparative Study on the Legislation of Taiwan and EU

• Main Authors: Yang, Huai Ching, 楊懷慶
• Other Authors: 吳秦雯
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/49d5pe

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 法律學系 === 104 === Government procurement has been constantly adopted as a policy tool in many countries for its profound effect on a nation’s economic performance and market competition. Legislation concerning government procurement becomes therefore important. According to Article 96 of Taiwan’s Government Procurement Act and other related regulations, procuring entities subjected to those provisions may provide preference to environmentally friendly products. Furthermore, as the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) was revised and come into force in 2014, it suggested that environment protection can be promoted via government procurement. As a consequence, the Executive Yuan formulated several policies to enhance environmentally friendly procurement. Nevertheless, such policies were not as effective as expected. Official statistics show that as government procurement value accounted for 60% of annual expenditures in 2014, the adoption and promotion of environment protection in that value merely accounted for 0.5%. Recognizing the problem, the thesis raises two questions: Is current legislation concerning environment protection in government procurement in accordance with the Constitution? Is there any better way to legislate? To begin with, the thesis first discusses the Constitution’s stipulation of environment protection and economic system to figure out the limit of legislative discretion. Secondly, by reviewing current legislation based on such limit, the thesis finds that neither the definition of “environment protection” nor the methods of priority procurement are appropriate. The thesis hence concludes that such inappropriateness of current legislation may be one of the reasons why those policies did not work out. Last but not least, the thesis has done a comparative study on government procurement legislation of the European Union (EU) to see how legislation in Taiwan may improve. While it is the first party to propose to amend the GPA by adding environment protection into the provisions, EU has also achieved remarkably in “Green Public Procurement” (GPP). In conclusion, the thesis has the following legislative suggestions: First, redefine “environment protection” in the Government Procurement Act and other related regulations. Second, add additional ways in current legislation for procuring entities to better adopt and promote of environment protection in government procurement, including using life-cycle costing and eco-labels.