I527-290 ESRIF Final Report (WEB).indd - European Commission

Role of Public Procurement
The European Commission 4 already emphasised the importance of public procurement in reinforcing the innovation
capabilities of the EU whilst improving the quality and effi ciency of public services. It also underlined the insuffi ciently exploited
opportunities in Europe of pre-commercial procurement. The Aho report also underlined the urgency to develop an explicit
strategy at European level to use public procurement to drive demand for innovative goods and services.
The European Commission 5 further developed this concept and defi nes pre-commercial procurement to be the Research and
Development (R&D) phase before commercialization, as in the table below.
The Communication in particular sees value in exploiting the potential of pre-commercial procurement in addressing
important societal challenges, such as aff ordable health care, climate change, energy effi ciency and security of energy supply,
food security, security of supply with fresh water, impact of natural disasters to critical infrastructure, etc.
In these areas, pre-commercial procurement provides excellent opportunities to ensure that capacity to deal with
the societal challenges is enhanced whilst supporting investment in development of research results into prototyped
solutions. As such, this role of the EU or national governments as procurers of R & D or “first buyer” of innovative
demonstrators can be a catalyst for innovation and a major driver to reinforce the competitiveness of European industry
in the markets concerned.
Following the European Commission’s recommendations, ESRIF WG 9 emphasises that pre-commercial procurement of
innovative security solutions should be promoted and the potential role of the EU as a “fi rst buyer” explored.
It is furthermore recommended to undertake a number of initiatives, such as the revision of public procurement rules and
procedures to stimulate the market and pre-commercial procurement of innovation. For this reason, ESRIF WG 9 suggests
considering the creation of an EU wide harmonised public procurement scheme. As one example, the standard handbook for
defence procurement, established within CEN, could be taken as a reference.
9.3.1.5 Promoting competitiveness and European excellence
The security market is an emerging on, but is nevertheless highly innovative, with a large, growing potential when adequately
responding to customer needs. At the same time, Europe can rely on a strong scientifi c, technological and industrial base
and the security market depends more than other markets on the creation of favourable framework conditions through
public policy measures. Given these characteristics, the security market provides promising opportunities for a European
lead market initiative and ESRIF WG 9 suggests that the EU reaches out for competitive leadership in selected elements of
this market by 2015.
4 COM (2006) 502 Final, Communication from the Commission, Putting knowledge into practice: A broad-based innovation
strategy for the EU, dated 13 September 2006
5 COM (2007) 799 Final, Communication from the Commission, Pre-commercial Procurement: Driving Innovation to ensure
sustainable high quality public services in Europe, dated 14 December 2007
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