Trg Republike Hrvatske 14
Zagreb, Hrvatska
Zadnje objave
Socially Responsible Public Procurement – Strengthening Institutional Capacities for Practical Implementation / Društveno odgovorna javna nabava – jačanje institucionalnih kapaciteta primjene u praksi – DOJN
Acronym/Akronim
DOJN
Project Duration / Trajanje projekta
48 months / mjeseci
Project Lead / Voditelj projekta
izv. prof. dr. sc. Marko Turudić
Researches / istraživači
prof. dr. sc. Ksenija Grubišić
Project Activities / Projektne aktivnosti
13 May 2026
New Project Output
A research paper from the DOJN project has been published in the European Journal of Public Procurement Markets, 6th Issue (May 2026).
Paper: “A Strategic but Suboptimal Public Procurement: It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature”
Author: Marko Turudić
Journal: European Journal of Public Procurement Markets, Vol. 6, Issue 1 (May 2026)
Publisher: APMEP – Portuguese Society of Public Markets
DOI/Access: https://eupublicmarkets.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/EJPPM-6th-issue-MAY-11.pdf
Relevance to DOJN Project:
This paper directly addresses one of the core challenges identified in the DOJN project: overcoming the traditional paradigm of public procurement that prioritizes price minimization. The paper demonstrates how strategic procurement approaches—particularly performance-based contracting—enable contracting authorities to incorporate multiple criteria beyond price, including social and sustainability objectives. By proposing practical frameworks and governance mechanisms for implementing performance-based contracts under EU Directive 2014/24/EU, the paper provides methodological guidance for the institutional capacity-building that the DOJN project seeks to advance. It shows how Croatian and European contracting authorities can move from purely price-driven procurement to strategic approaches that support socially responsible public procurement objectives while maintaining transparency and competition.
2 April 2026
DOJN Project Milestone: Publishing Agreement with Springer Nature
We are pleased to announce that project lead Marko Turudić has signed a publishing agreement with Springer Nature for our edited volume “Strengthening Capacities for Socially Responsible Public Procurement – Lessons from South-Eastern Europe” which will appear in the series “European Union and its Neighbours in a Globalized World.”
This volume represents the principal research output of our EU-funded institutional project “Socially Responsible Public Procurement – Strengthening Institutional Capacities for Practical Implementation” (IIP-DOJN-25-07).
Research Scope
The book draws on large-scale empirical research into the application of socially responsible procurement criteria across South-Eastern Europe. Our primary research involves extensive data scraping of procurement contract notices, supplemented by surveys and interviews with contracting authorities in the region. The comparative analysis spans Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, and North Macedonia, providing a comprehensive regional perspective on implementation practices and institutional capacity.
Acknowledgments
We extend our gratitude to Dr. Anja Trautmann LL.M. at Springer for her confidence in this project and to the series editors — Professor Marc Bungenberg, Professor Mareike Fröhlich, Professor Thomas Gigerenz, and Professor Neda Zdraveva — for welcoming this work into the series.
This project is made possible by the collaborative efforts of our research team:
- Professor Ksenija Grubišić, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law
- Associate Professor Stjepan Srhoj, University of Split, Faculty of Economics
- Melko Dragojević, MSc, University of Dubrovnik
- Eva Ružić, Mag. Iur., University of Rijeka, Faculty of Law
And a group of regional public procurement experts that will provide insights into socially responsible public procuurement in Serbia, Slovenia and North Macedonia;
- Assistant Professor Katja Štemberger Brizani, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Law
- Bojana Todorović, PhD, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Law
- Assistant Professor Konstantin Bitrakov, PhD, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje
20 November 2025
Project Lead Presentation: 7th European Conference on Sustainable and Innovative Public Procurement
Project Lead Marko Turudić (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law) delivered an invited presentation titled “Strategic but Suboptimal Public Procurement: It’s Not A Bug, It’s a Feature” at the 7th European Conference on Sustainable and Innovative Public Procurement, held in Lisbon on 20 November 2025.
Conference Overview
The conference, organized by the Portuguese Association of Public Markets (APMEP), COMEGI at Universidade Lusíada, and OPET in partnership with the Lisbon Public Law Research Centre at the University of Lisbon, brought together researchers, practitioners, and experts to discuss recent developments in public procurement across the EU. The event featured prominent speakers including Professors Roberto Caranta (University of Turin), Piotr Bogdanowicz (University of Warsaw), and Miguel Assis Raimundo (University of Lisbon), among others.
Presentation Context
Marko’s presentation was part of SESSION 1: The evolution of the EU legal framework / Environmental and social sustainability, where he engaged with contemporary challenges in EU procurement reform, particularly the tension between strategic policy objectives and practical implementation constraints in Member States.
The presentation aligns with the DOJN project’s focus on understanding institutional capacity for socially responsible procurement implementation across South-Eastern Europe, offering a critical perspective on how formal rules interact with Member State practice.
Project Summary / Sažetak projekta
Project Summary / Sažetak projekta
Project summary
Public procurement procedures have long ceased to be solely and exclusively procedures through which contracting authorities acquire the highest-quality goods, services, and works for the lowest price. This shift has been particularly driven by the concept of the “most economically advantageous tender,” under which price becomes only one of the evaluation criteria. However, the biggest change comes from recognizing that public procurement procedures — and the state’s enormous purchasing power — can also be used to achieve other (secondary) objectives. One of the most important secondary objectives is sustainable public procurement, which is most often divided into green (environmental) and socially responsible procurement.
Green public procurement has for many years been recognized as an extremely important objective at both the level of the European Union (EU) and the Republic of Croatia (RC). There is a wide range of green criteria that contracting authorities in Croatia regularly use in their public procurement procedures. The importance of green public procurement is so widely acknowledged that special tools exist (e.g., the website https://zelenanabava.hr) to encourage the implementation of green criteria and to disseminate examples of good practice. In addition, annual Statistical Reports on Public Procurement contain dedicated chapters monitoring the application of green elements in procurement procedures.
Unfortunately, the situation is significantly worse with regard to socially responsible public procurement. Until 2025, socially responsible procurement was not specifically represented in statistical reports, there are no online tools with examples of good practice, and some of our research shows extremely limited use of socially responsible elements in public procurement procedures — only about 4% of procedures in 2022 (Turudić, M., Dragojević, M., Discretionary Exclusion Grounds in Directive 2014/24/EU: A Missed Opportunity for Socially Responsible Public Procurement?, EPPPL 1(2023)).
Therefore, the main questions this project seeks to answer are:
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To what extent have elements of socially responsible public procurement been used in procurement procedures since the entry into force of the new Public Procurement Act (2017)?
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What are the main obstacles faced by contracting authorities in using socially responsible procurement elements in Croatia?
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How can the regulatory framework be changed (in the short and long term) to enable greater use of socially responsible procurement elements in Croatia?
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Sažetak projekta
Postupci javne nabave su odavno prestali biti samo i isključivo postupci kojima naručitelji nabavljaju najkvalitetnija moguća dobra, usluge i radove za najmanje novaca. Ovo se posebno počelo mijenjati kroz koncept ”ekonomski najpovoljnije ponude” kroz koji cijena postaje samo jedan od kriterija ocjenjivanja ponuda. Ipak – najveća promjena dolazi kroz shvaćanje kako se postupci javne nabave, odnosno ogromna kupovna moć države, može koristiti i za ostvarivanje nekih drugih (sekundarnih) ciljeva. Jedan od najvažnijih sekundarnih ciljeva je održiva javna nabava, koja se najčešće dijeli na zelenu (okolišnu) i društveno odgovornu nabavu. Zelena javna nabava je već dugi niz godina na razini Europske unije (EU) ali i Republike Hrvatske (RH) prepoznata kao iznimno važan cilj, te postoji niz zelenih kriterija koja naručitelji u RH redovito koriste u svojim postupcima javne nabave. Važnost zelena javne nabave je toliko prepoznata da postoje posebni alati (npr. web stranica https://zelenanabava.hr ) kojima se potiče implementacija zelenih kriterija i kojima se šire primjeri dobrih praksi. Također, u godišnjim Statističkim izvješćima o javnoj nabavi postoje posebna poglavlja kojima se prati primjena zelenih elemenata u javnonabavnim postupcima.
Nažalost, situacija je značajno lošija sa društveno odgovornom javnom nabavom. Društveno odgovorna javna nabava sve do 2025. nije bila posebno zastupljena u statističkim izvješćima, ne postoje online alati sa primjerima dobre prakse, a neka naša istraživanja pokazuju iznimno malo korištenje društveno odgovornih elemenata u postupcima javne nabave – samo u oko 4% javnonabavnih postupaka u 2022. (Turudić, M., Dragojević, M., Discretionary Exclusion Grounds in Directive 2014/24/EU: A Missed Opportunity for Socially Responsible Public Procurement?, EPPPL 1(2023)).
Stoga su glavna pitanja na koja želimo odgovoriti ovim projektom sljedeća;
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- Koliko se zaista u postupcima javne nabave od stupanja na snagu novog Zakona o javnoj nabavi (2017.) koriste elementi društveno odgovorne javne nabave?
- Koje su glavne prepreke naručiteljima u korištenju elemenata društveno odgovorne javne nabave u RH?
- Na koji način se može promijeniti normativni okvir (kratkoročno i dugoročno) kako bi se omogućilo veće korištenje elemenata društveno odgovorne nabave u RH?
