In the past three years, the European Commission and several public authorities in Europe have launched a number of initiatives that stimulate the public procurement of innovations and stimulate innovative public procurement itself. These include Green Public Procurement GPP, e-Procurement, social considerations, variants in procurement, technical dialogue or forward commitment procurement methodologies, as well as Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) or research oriented public procurements. Stakeholder and expert communities, training and guidance are being developed. To start building a European critical mass in this field, there is a need to facilitate the networking and exchanging of best practice among public procurers and relevant stakeholders. This conference aims to promote a connected community of stakeholders and identify possible joint actions.

Public procurers, policy makers and other key stakeholders for implementing pre-commercial
procurement are warmly invited to this conference.
Regarding pre-commercial procurement, the conference has a dual objective.
• Firstly, to inform and consult stakeholders about the latest developments for further EC
support to pre-commercial procurement networks and cross-border PCP pilots. This part of the
programme is concentrated on day 1 of the conference.
• Secondly, to encourage networking between PCP practitioners as well as with other networks
working on public procurement and innovation. This part of the programme is concentrated on
day 2 of the conference.
Concerning opportunities for discussion on pre-commercial procurement during the conference there
are in particular:
• The plenary session on PCP (11-12h time slot on day 1 of the conference): this session
intends to stimulate discussion with presentations about further Commission support for PCP,
the possibility of EIB loans to public procurers for launching PCP projects, an experience of
the Eszak-Alföld region in Hungary on using Structural Funds resources to setup PCP
programs.
• The parallel session on PCP in the afternoon of the first day of the conference (15h15-16h15),
where experiences from first PCP networking projects in concrete application areas such a
health, energy etc will stimulate discussion with feedback on concrete measures that could
help to mainstream PCP more widely across Europe.
• Interested networks can also submit requests for slots to meet particular other networks on day
2 of the event.
To express your interest to participate in the conference, please e-mail to lieve.bos@ec.europa.eu
(DG INFSO) and bertrand.wert@ec.europa.eu (DG ENTR).