Last week, on Thursday, February 23, 2023, as part of our Responsible Public Procurement project, we organized a workshop "On Responsible Public Procurement", which was opened by the new chairman of the Public Procurement Office, Mr. Peter Kubovič.

The main topic was the use of MEAT criteria and quality improvement in public procurement in Slovakia, which are still very current topics.

After a long time, we had the opportunity to personally meet with the public procurement authorities, present the project and discuss the current situation regarding the MEAT criteria in Slovakia and also outline plans for the future together. Mrs. Jana Dacková also helped us in the project presentations as the head of the Program Management Department, EEA and Norway Grants Department from MIRRI, who expressed her satisfaction with the procedure in the implementation of the Responsible Public Procurement project and highlighted it as an example of good practice, for which we are very grateful.

The MEAT criteria were discussed verbatim by experts from Slovak practice, such as Branislav Hudec, Michal Garaj or Róbert Kramár, who sparked a lively discussion about what quality actually is and whether the mandatory use of quality criteria is the right way.

However, foreign guests such as Matthieu Cahen and Paulo Magina from the OECD, Markus Theiner from the Austrian BBG and Mateusz Posieczek from the Polish Public Procurement Office also came to share their experiences, bringing a new wind and a positive vision of quality criteria, especially by presenting examples from abroad, which showed us that it can be done and our efforts have a clearer goal.

Speakers' presentations can be found HERE.