BUYDIS – Equality and Diversity in Employment through Public Procurement

Summary

Identify and experiment anti-discrimination clauses in public contracts of local authorities.

Description

Public procurement, particularly the purchasing power that public entities exert on their suppliers of goods and services, can serve as an important tool to foster social change.  "Social clauses" are used by many public entities, mostly in the context of social inclusion, obliging contractors to employ persons who are in a disadvantaged position on the labour market, for example disabled persons.  But what if, instead of using procurement to facilitate labour market insertion, procurement is used to combat what is perceived as a major obstacle to employment for vulnerable groups, namely discrimination?

This 12-month project, supported financially and politically by the French Ministry of the Interior, seeks to identify and experiment anti-discrimination clauses in public contracts passed by local authorities.

The project is led by ISM CORUM and benefits from the anti-discrimination expertise of MPG. It involves the cities of Lyon and Nantes.

The project includes the following activities:

• Comparative analysis of present opportunities for inserting non-discrimination clauses in public contracts, including:
• the different legal, political and administrative contexts at national level
• existing practices in the participating cities regarding social clauses
• the volume and type of public contracts entered into by participating cities
• defining the possibilities for implementing anti-discrimination clauses.
• Development of a training kit.
• One-day training session for participating city councils.
• Development of benchmarks and indicators.
• Development of a toolkit for using non-discrimination clauses.
• Development of a protocol for experimenting non-discrimination clauses.