WEED has been committed to socially just and ecologically sustainable public procurement practices for many years. In addition to our other approaches, we see public procurement as another way in which corporate responsibility can be implemented and enforced along global supply chains

As the largest economy in Europe, Germany has one of the largest public procurement markets, totalling around 500 billion euros per year wtih multiple impacts on the economy and society. If all public procurement were to be based on ambitious social and ecological criteria, this would have a major impact on supply and therefore also on global and regional working conditions and climate and environmental protection.

Through public procurement, cities and municipalities as well as the federal government have leverage to enforce respect for human rights and environmental protection. One of the goals of our work is fair working conditions along global supply chains, for example in the electronics industry, the automotive industry and other sectors (natural stone, sporting goods). We want to ensure that human rights and environmental standards are observed both in the extraction of the necessary raw materials and in production, which largely takes place in low-wage countries.

WEED demand to call for ambitious social and ecological criteriain public contracts and procurement to comply with human rights and ecological standards along the value chain.

WEED has been coordinating the Berlin fair procurement alliance (FAIRgabe-Bündnis), an alliance of development and environmental policy organisations and trade unions, which campaigns for ambitious legal regulations and the implementation of sustainable public procurement practices at state level.