Spurred by the report on The Future of European Competitiveness led by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, institutions across Europe are examining how to promote innovation through public procurement. On November 13-14, 2024, GW Law’s Christopher Yukins met with his colleagues in Europe about these ongoing initiatives.
At the University of Utrecht’s School of Law, Professor Yukins met with Professor Elisabetta Manunza and her team to discuss academic cooperation between the EU and U.S. procurement research communities. Among other things, they discussed ongoing research with NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA). University of Utrecht Associate Professor Willem Janssen and Professor Marta Andhov have dealt often with issues of innovation through procurement in their award-winning podcast, BESTEK. Utrecht PhD student Nathan Meershoek has written on the challenges of innovation in defense procurement; NATO’s unit to foster innovative technology, DIANA, is one answer to those challenges.
DIANA was established by NATO to find and accelerate dual-use innovation capacity across the Alliance. DIANA provides companies with the resources, networks and guidance to develop deep technologies to solve critical defense and security challenges.
Professor Yukins also met with Stephan Corvers and his team in s-Hertogenbosch. The CORVERS consultants are legal experts in strategic public procurement, innovation and contracting. CORVERS has been asked to help assess best practices in procurement for innovation, from around the world, on behalf of the European Assistance For Innovation Procurement – EAFIP, an initiative financed by the European Commission (DG CONNECT) to provide local assistance to public procurers to promote innovation and best practices.
A few days after those meetings, the European Commission announced a series of initiatives to advance innovation in procurement. Those initiatives included a public consultation on possible updates to the EU procurement directives — including, importantly, a review of how the directives might be updated to foster innovation.
