00:00:00 Marta Andhov

Welcome to Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. Today, with Willem, we will be discussing mandatory sustainability procurement requirements in EU law and its significance for academics.

00:00:18 About Bestek

Welcome to Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Willem Janssen and Dr. Marta Andhov discuss public procurement issues, their love of food, and academic life.

00:00:29 About Bestek

In each episode, Willem, Marta, and their guests search for answers to intriguing public procurement questions. This is Bestek, let’s delve into public procurement.

00:00:43 Marta Andhov

We’re back.

00:00:44 Willem Janssen

It’s so good to be back.

00:00:46 Marta Andhov

It’s so good to be back.

00:00:48 Marta Andhov

From all different places around the world after a couple of months.

00:00:52 Marta Andhov

After my debut of doing this on my own, I need to say I prefer to do it.

00:00:56 Willem Janssen

I don’t think we’ve ever had an episode that got that many likes on LinkedIn, though, so it’s a bit sad, really. I kindly did this also to accommodate my small break to deal with some other things, and now I’m so happy to be back to the podcast here in Copenhagen as we’re doing this live, which is always a fantastic opportunity to look into each other’s eyes and laugh about the silly stuff we say about public procurement.

00:01:17 Willem Janssen

But what’s happening today?

00:01:23 Marta Andhov

What’s happening today? We’re going back to something that we really love, which is disseminating a lot of the research that has been going on over the last month.

00:01:35 Willem Janssen

Shameless plugs, right?

00:01:36 Marta Andhov

Some shameless plugs. Yeah, but I think also something that we feel very comfortable with, right. I think like when…

00:01:42 Willem Janssen

Plugging ourselves?

00:01:42 Marta Andhov

No, I don’t mean…

00:01:44 Marta Andhov

I don’t mean just flagging the work that we’re doing, but…

00:01:49 Marta Andhov

We took some time. We had a chance to really dive deep into some of the new developments, and now we feel quite strongly that we’ve spent time on it. We know what we’re talking about, right.

00:02:01 Willem Janssen

On top of that, I think we also talked about this in one of the episodes is that we do think it’s also important to actively do this type of stuff as academics. So you don’t just write; you also disseminate and you’re actively in whatever role you feel comfortable with, try to get the word out to as many people as possible to also better this world that we live in.

00:02:20 Marta Andhov

Well, yeah, for sure. For the research not to be something that only you and the two closest friends of yours know about, but actually for this to end up with people that do these things in practice and we somehow, hopefully, give our own little grain of contribution to practice. So without further ado, we will focus today on the outcome of two projects, predominantly focusing on one, but just to give an indication of what we’re talking about and where you can find it, we’ll be talking about the book. That Willem is one of the co-editors with Roberto Caranta, and I also had a chance to be invited to contribute. Thank you, Willem.

00:03:05 Marta Andhov

Which is on mandatory sustainability procurement requirements in the EU.

00:03:10 Marta Andhov

And we’ll be focusing in our today’s conversation really on giving you a little bit of a teaser on the scope of that book.

00:03:14 Marta Andhov

Giving you a little bit of teaser on the on the particularly scoping.

00:03:19 Marta Andhov

Which is a lot highlighted in the first chapter that Willem authored and also shout out to the report that both of us had a chance to contribute to, our report on shaping sustainable public procurement in the EU. We had a chance to work on that report for the Greens/EFA group in the EU Parliament, and that report is freely available. We’ll make sure that we link it in the description of the episode, and of course, the book is coming. So we’re hoping that we provide you with enough of a teaser and interest that you’ll be interested in going and getting the book, and we will of course also include the link to where you can pre-order the book in the description. But without further ado, I would want to ask a question to the co-editor.

00:04:14 Marta Andhov

Sounded very formal right now.

00:04:15 Willem Janssen

“Because I was getting a bit nervous now, actually, before we start doing that, I also want to give a quick shout-out. As you rightly mentioned, the book was co-authored with Roberto Caranta. He also worked on the report for the Greens with us.

00:04:26 Willem Janssen

And we had the pleasure of working with Olga Martina Ortega. I think credit where credit’s due. So, when we give…

00:04:35 Willem Janssen

Maybe I’m just spreading the plug or the shout-out to the report, so it doesn’t just look like we’re plugging our own work. It’s also their fault. Yeah, but I just wanted to add that before we delve into your book.”

00:04:45 Willem Janssen

“Go into contact.”

00:04:46 Marta Andhov

“Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for ensuring that. And then…

00:04:52 Marta Andhov

Because I think that both the report and the book share a commonality, which is we’re looking at the newest developments, what really happened, what the Commission has been doing, what discussions have been happening in the European Parliament, and how we’re shaping future law. The book itself is really focusing on this shift towards mandatory sustainability requirements in public procurement.

00:05:18 Marta Andhov

Why do you think, Willem, this is relevant right now? Why was the book relevant? Why did the idea come about that this is something different and worth focusing on right now?”

00:05:30 Willem Janssen

“Yeah. So, the idea came from, I think, one sentence in the EU Green Deal, where it suddenly mentioned that contracting authorities must ensure that procurements are green, paraphrasing a bit. At the time, I discussed this with Roberto Caranta, and we thought, ‘Hey, maybe something is up. Let’s start thinking about a book project.’ Also, with lots of sectoral pieces of legislation about to come out of the new Green Deal still unfolding, it was a bit of a moving target.

00:06:04 Willem Janssen

That sometimes made the book project also challenging, right? It’s still unfolding. We weren’t reflecting on something that happened 50 years ago. Now, we’re actually looking at something that’s unfolding before our eyes. And luckily, Hart also thought that was a good idea. Hart Publishers, so the book is out in October, and it’s called ‘Mandatory Sustainability Requirements in EU Public Procurement Law: Reflections on a Paradigm Change.’ And what we mean by that ‘paradigm change’ is that…

00:06:34 Willem Janssen

We have a lot of voluntary possibilities to procure sustainable outcomes in public procurement law. They’ve been reflected on a lot.

00:06:42 Marta Andhov

And we’ve had them for a long time, to be fair, right? As a possibility, you could have done that for decades now.

00:06:48 Willem Janssen

Exactly. And they were further emphasized in 2014. But it was always voluntary. And I think what’s interesting is we’ve also debated mandatory requirements before, right, in the context of Article 18.2 in the classic directive, abnormally low tenders. All those aspects come into play when we talk about the question: do the directives, the public procurement directive, mandate it now, right? And there was always a bit of an interesting discussion, but it was always left in the middle because the Court was never conclusive about it. It gave some hints in the Tim case, but all of a sudden…

00:07:25 Willem Janssen

The debate started to shift a bit, and that’s why we refer to it as a paradigm change. For the years to come, we’re going to see a lot more mandatory pieces of legislation coming out, requiring discussion. I think what’s important as well is that we don’t take these things for granted as academics, right? It’s happening, we see it, and I think our role as academics is also to provide an understanding first of what’s happening and to critically assess it, to discuss it, and to provide some type of forward-looking thoughts about what this will do with the effectiveness of EU public procurement law in the future.

00:08:01 Willem Janssen

And, mostly, also to think about saying that it would hamper that effectiveness. What are the solutions? What do we need to look for? And one of the reasons why we started working with this fantastic group of authors that contributed to 15 chapters is to really see how we, as academics, can help guide this debate and provide a first critical, comprehensive discussion on which, hopefully, future scholarship can also build and further expand and improve, and also critically disagree with us.

00:08:20 Willem Janssen

“To really see how we, as academics, can help guide this debate and provide a first critical, comprehensive discussion on which, hopefully, future scholarship can build, expand, and improve, and also critically disagree with us.

00:08:35 Marta Andhov

“Yeah. And I think what is quite interesting, and there is this commonality again within the book and the report, is that we also had a chance to comment on law in motion. So, things that are continuously changing and, well, hopefully, you know, it’s not that you really think that you’re going to change things, but you’re hoping that if you point out certain inconsistencies, and if something is in the form of a proposal, that inconsistency can be addressed, or at least you are highlighting certain consequences of the approaches that have been chosen, right? And what we need to be prepared for.

00:09:16 Marta Andhov

As you said, it’s a big shift, a big change that sort of has been like a tap, you know, from dripping to slowly running water, especially now with this new legislation. But what I wanted to ask you…

00:09:36 Marta Andhov

Undoubtedly, it’s a really interesting exercise. We have some of our listeners that are academics, but also a big part of our listeners are practitioners. So, for whom the book really is, if I’m, you know, a contracting authority, a public servant, if I’m a lawyer, what might be the reason you need to be interested in looking at that book?

00:09:59 Willem Janssen

“So first, you have to be a public procurement nerd. I think that’s definitely one of the prerequisites to ever consider buying this book or discussing some of the content. I think it’s quite broad, and I think that’s also what’s interesting, as I don’t know yet if the target audience knows that this book is for them. What I mean by that is this shift that’s unfolding is, I think, very much unrecognized on the main Member State level.

00:10:25 Willem Janssen

When I spoke to the ministries in the Netherlands or foreign authorities about this, the proposals that I saw being tabled mostly in, say, environmental law pieces of legislation, they didn’t know about the angle that it would have on public procurement or the impact that it would have. But I think for the future, it will be definitely relevant for academics, of course, some very foundational chapters, but also for legislators and policymakers that would have to implement and deal with these types of mandatory requirements in the public procurement context, but also practitioners, I think, who would have to base their claims on these requirements and perhaps they could use it to challenge what would be deemed, in their eyes, unsustainable decisions by contracting authorities, for instance. They’ll need to interpret. They’ll need to take it to the courts. So I think it’s quite broad for public procurement professionals. It may be too wide, but anyone that has something to do with sustainability and public procurement, I think, would take an interest in it.

00:11:22 Marta Andhov

“Well, it’s interesting because I actually would argue that it’s even broader, and the reason why I say that is, you know, I had a chance over the last months in Australia, also to work a little bit with multinationals and B2B (business-to-business) procurement. It’s not public, but I was trying to learn a bit more about what you learn from this more dynamic world. One of the phrases that I came across quite often is, ‘You need to get in early, and when you think that you’re getting in early, you’re already too late.’ This is also for if you’re a legal counsel to a big company that partakes in procurement. I think all these elements, or if you are actually working with contracting authorities, show how you can get ahead of the curve, how you are proactive and you prepare your management of a particular category of procurements in line with those upcoming requirements rather than being reactive and realizing when those laws become enforceable. Then you need to figure out what you’re doing with lowering the emissions in this and that. Right now, you have still a bit of time to get prepared for that. So, I think the application of various chapters is quite broad. It’s also for building a business case, right? Because something that I think is also worth underlining is that the book also has a certain level of interdisciplinary character, right? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?”

00:13:00 Willem Janssen

“Yeah, so when we one of the first hypotheses of the book is to discuss what are the questions that should be answered prior to moving towards mandatory requirements, and this is also where interdisciplinary aspects come in. Enrique Carreras and Davida Donna looked at the economics of it. If we look at it purely from an economics perspective at regulation, right, what are the pros and cons? What type of market failures are addressed? Is this from an economics perspective, is that a good move, and they rightly point out that in many cases, the research is not there yet, and sometimes it’s even pointing towards the direction where, from an economic perspective, it might even be better to leave discretion, right? So, I think those are important questions. In addition, you could talk about the chapter that Ruben, Nicholas, and the team from the Centre for Public Procurement wrote about institutional aspects, right? What do we do? How do we strengthen contracting authorities internally, and how can we nudge them perhaps more rather than forcing them to do these types of behavioral economics a bit, is that fair?

00:14:10 Willem Janssen

“Yeah, perhaps a bit more from a public purchasing perspective. So, really looking at it from a supply chain public procurement perspective. And they also point out, and they say it should be more than just law, right? It should also be strengthening knowledge and expertise. It should also be nudging and all those types of forces, as they call it, should be taken into place. So, it’s a legal book, but it’s got these perspectives as well, I think, because they’re mostly also questions that should have been discussed prior to including these mandatory requirements, and I think the general gist is, or at least what we see come up as a common thread, is that in many cases those questions weren’t addressed.”

00:14:53 Marta Andhov

“Yeah, and I think that’s a very good point to start this research with because, ultimately, I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of the ‘dead letter of law.’ You can clearly point it out, let’s say, in the context of not mandatory or voluntary clauses.

00:15:13 Marta Andhov

Let’s take, for instance, a voluntary sustainability-related performance clause. And then, if that standard is not upheld during the contract, the contracting authority may not trigger that provision because they would need to go through the whole process again. And let’s say they know that this contractor is the best in the market and most likely they are going to win it again.

00:15:39 Marta Andhov

The supplier is also not interested, so, you know, you went through all this exercise, you probably even paid more for it, but none of the parties is interested in actually making that specific provision enforceable. Then, what really is the point and value of such a provision? So, I think this is a very good discussion to start with: Is the law really the right tool to address these types of challenges? Will it have the effect that we want, and so on and so forth?

00:16:07 Marta Andhov

So, I really actually like that aspect of the book that you brought up, with regard to bringing together different people with different viewpoints and backgrounds to give it a more holistic feel.”

00:16:21 Willem Janssen

“And I think that’s also interesting, involving people who aren’t necessarily public procurement lawyers, right? We have a chapter on subsidiarity by Them from the Brink, who really questions if the principle of subsidiarity was taken into account properly while this move is unfolding. Could still be for the proposals and the discussion that could be strengthened, but subsidiarity is definitely an attention point. Should it be regulated on the Member State level, or should it, in terms of shared competence, be done on the EU level? And the same goes for alternative types of regulation. Should it be product-specific requirements, or should we even go further? Or should we focus on regulating the producer instead of regulating contracting authorities? And as Markus and Remco do a great job at highlighting, perhaps putting procurement lawyers in their place, they do it very kindly, by the way. But they’re pointing out alternatives to regulation rather than only focusing on, ‘Yeah, it should be mandated in the public procurement context.'”

00:17:22 Marta Andhov

“What is your opinion, you know, going through all this exercise? Because I feel like we also, throughout our career and this focus on sustainable public procurement, have been through quite a lot of these discussions, particularly with behavioral economists and non-regulatory sustainability experts, and not just in trainings and capacity building. We’ve been around that quite a lot. So, I wonder whether this is still not done at a good enough level or depth that we’re not there yet, and we just need more time, or whether this goes as far as it can and right now is really the moment. Especially, from an environmental science perspective, the world is kind of on fire, and we’re running out of time. So, is there a need to really kick in this mandatory law, or are we being a bit impatient?”

00:18:24 Willem Janssen

“Well, I think there’s a lot to say for both angles. If I give a very balanced, perhaps boring academic response to what you just rightly posed, when economists challenge mandatory requirements, they rightly point towards cost-benefit analysis, those types of questions that have dominated many economic discussions. But, on the other hand, as lawyers, we bring in equality, transparency, and just societies, right? And you could say, well, perhaps it’s going to cost us a bit more, and you could still argue, well, perhaps we should look at taxation or subsidizing certain activities. So, from a legal perspective, you could argue our role is to critically discuss this move and say, well, perhaps there is a place, even though it might not be as economically advantageous, to do it here because it’s all hands on deck to move towards a more sustainable society.”

00:19:36 Marta Andhov

“But what do you think, from an editorial perspective, being very well acquainted with all these chapters and obviously writing the conclusions and intro, is the role, really, of public procurement law as it comes out of all that material?”

00:19:56 Willem Janssen

“Well, there’s a Dutch saying, ‘You can’t brush them all with one stroke,’ and I think that applies here. I can’t speak on behalf of all the authors, of course, but the general conclusion is that there is a role for mandatory requirements within the context of public procurement that could be very useful. But the debate often isn’t so much about whether we should move to mandatory requirements from a lawyer’s perspective, but more about how we do it right. And then, in the discussion, it varies between whether we should move towards targets, whether it should be product-specific requirements, or whether there should be really minimum sustainability requirements introduced for public procurement. So, mandatory, yes, but how?”

00:20:41 Marta Andhov

“Can you tell us a little more about this typology that you identified and summarized in the book?”

00:20:48 Willem Janssen

“Yeah. Roberto and I felt very strongly about the need to have some type of basis to structure the debate in the future about these requirements, because there’s a lot of different types of requirements. So, we thought, let’s see, based on what we know now, what the main categories are. And it’s those three aspects that I mentioned: targets, product-specific requirements, and then the more novel one, those minimum mandatory public procurement requirements, which can also be divided into subsets, like horizontal requirements that apply generally, and vertical ones that are more specific, along with distinctions between substantive and procedural requirements

00:21:24 Willem Janssen

“And then I think the more novel one is those minimum mandatory public procurement requirements, which can also be divided into subsets, right? So, we have horizontal requirements that apply irrespective of the type of sector or the object that we’re regulating in general.

00:21:44 Willem Janssen

Sounds like what we have in the Netherlands, right? The obligation to create as much societal value as possible, right? A very broad obligation that rests on the shoulders of contracting authorities.

00:21:56 Willem Janssen

Or more rule-specific requirements, right? So, you would say, well, these specific requirements apply to the procurement of wind turbines, right? And particularly, those vertical and horizontal discussions, on top of another distinction that can be made between substantive requirements and procedural requirements. So, procedural requirements being you need to use award criteria or you need to use technical specifications.

00:22:27 Willem Janssen

Whereas substantive would say you need to use this type of award criteria; you need to focus on lowering Type 2 emissions, right?

00:22:36 Marta Andhov

“Yeah, absolutely. But I think also, we’ve seen quite a lot in the first wave of this proposal when it comes to the procedural; it was not even as strongly worded as you pointed out, but it was more prescriptive even.

00:22:50 Marta Andhov

You should consider, which, you know, in a sense, ‘consider’ means, and I won’t do any of it, I don’t think. So, it’s also like, well, actually, what is the wording and what is the consequence of that provision, really?

00:23:02 Marta Andhov

Wonderful. And then you lay the groundwork and the foundation in the first part of the book, but then you have two different types of chapters, right? The chapters that specifically look at various sectors, like transport, food, textiles, batteries, being some of those. And then you also have country reports. What can a reader get differently from these chapters? How do the country reports, in a way, cut through various sectors? What do you think is the main added value of these two different styles of research?

00:23:53 Willem Janssen

“Yes. So, the sectoral studies, and I’ll just briefly highlight them, include chapters on transport by Abby Semple, food by , Hanna Schebesta (Wageningen University, the Netherlands) and Maria José Plana Casado (Wageningen University, the Netherlands), textiles by Malgorzata Koszewska (Lodz University of Technology, Poland) and Jeanne Svensky Ligte (Lodz University of Technology, Poland), and construction by Dorothy Gruyaert (KU Leuven, Belgium) and Veerle Pissierssens (Lawyer, Belgium). What I think is really interesting is that the typology we mentioned just then really comes to light in those different types of areas. One of the main conclusions is that they advocate for more of a sectoral approach, because generally sectoral approaches also mean that substantive requirements come into play. It’s far more concrete, easier to enforce, and much clearer.

00:24:41 Marta Andhov

And you can standardize them. Like what I’m being asked right now, also when I’m being asked to do some trainings, is ‘Can you provide us with like a blueprint clause on environmental XY and Z that we can put in our clauses?’ So, you know, it’s also like scaling up this in a way that each time it doesn’t take a really long time to figure out. Part of me is skeptical because, my word, do you think about it in a really serious manner? But another part of me, that puts the very commercial hat on, is like, ‘Yeah, we kind of want to address it, but we don’t want to address it every single time. We want to figure out a way.’ And I think this is very difficult when you talk in a very general sense about sustainable procurement, right? If we’re talking, we’re buying buses, for all the buses that we’re buying, what are like the three things that we can almost copy-paste in all our tenders, right? So, I think that’s for sure, from a practitioner’s perspective, something that can be easily seen as beneficial, this type of standardization in particular sectors.

00:25:42 Willem Janssen

“Yeah, for sure. And I think if you read, say, the chapter by Abby Semple, I think she’s very critical of the Clean Vehicles Directive in that regard for standardizing certain aspects, but in many cases, not having much effect in the Member States. And I think what I like about those sectoral studies is that they really look at the specifics of a certain sector and then discuss, ‘OK, what does that mean? Is there legislation yet? Does that work or not?’ And on top of that, ‘Does that provide legal certainty, and what does it do as a consequence?’ And this is something that, like, is very strongly coming out of the institutional perspective from Fredo Schotanus (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) and Ruben Nicolas (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) as well. You know, ‘How do we leave room for innovation?’ Like when we start having these standards that you refer to, is that minimum harmonization, something we discussed in the report for the Greens at the European level as well, we strongly advocate for minimum harmonization, saying, ‘Well, this should be the European minimum, but if you want to do more, go for it.’ If that works in a certain market, I think that should be really important.”

00:27:04 Willem Janssen

“Just to test this typology, and to say, ‘How do we regulate and what does that mean for specific sectors such as construction, textiles, etc.?’ And where we move to the country studies is that EU law doesn’t exist in a vacuum, right? We realize that there’s already quite a bit of experience with national mandatory requirements. We have general rules in Spain, you have a lot of climate-related obligations that have just been introduced, but where the situation is still questionable about what’s that going to do in practice. Like, how will that be enforced? Will it be enforced? Will the picture be the same as what we have in the Netherlands, where they’re really symbolic pieces of legislation?”

00:27:47 Willem Janssen

“And most interestingly, I’m not trying to discredit any of the work that Paul Heijnsbroek (Straatman Koster, the Netherlands) did on the Netherlands and Ximena Lazo Vitoria (University of Alcalá, Spain) on the Spanish chapters because they’re really fruitful and in-depth. But it’s Italy and the chapter written by Giullia Botta, where she really shows how intense the Italian pieces of legislation have been, with over 30 categories of specific requirements existing for specific categories, such as office furniture, supplies, etc., where the legislature has really taken the European Voluntary GPP criteria and just made them mandatory. Yeah, and it seemed to work.

00:28:29 Marta Andhov

“And I think what will be really interesting is, you know, thinking about the future in a couple of years, just actually going back and seeing which approach will be really pessimistic if all of them actually are the same and not much moved, or whether really you can see a positive development in one way of doing things, right.

00:28:51 Willem Janssen

“For sure. And I think that’s also highlighted by the final two chapters in the book. François Lichère and also a piece they’ve written something very forward-thinking about legal protection. What are the courts going to do, also something that we discussed in episode 11 of this podcast. They’ve obviously…

00:29:09 Marta Andhov

“Yeah, we wanted to, sorry, about the role of courts, right, and…

00:29:11 Willem Janssen

“Yes. How? What will the courts do? Will public interest litigation be a thing in the future in public procurement? They detail those angles in their chapter. And something that I’d like to just finally highlight about the general chapter that Roberto Caranta and I wrote, overlooking all of the chapters, is the general tendency that a lot is happening. There are a lot of fruitful reflections that came out of the book, I hope. But also, we’re a little concerned; it seems to become a very fragmented framework regulating public procurement. Many foundational questions have not been or sufficiently answered. The different types of ‘hows’ — how you regulate — are they really being weighed up? Are the legal consequences that exist if you would implement them in specific Member States or in specific industries being fully addressed? And I think, on top of that, the debate has only just started. There was a bit of scholarship, there’s a bit more, and let’s hope there’s a lot more coming our way in the future.

00:30:24 Marta Andhov

“Well, undoubtedly, the court would do us a great favor by commenting on some of those things along the way, right? We can hope for that. Yeah, I think that, as an author and someone who looked through the book and has a bit of knowledge about what is in it before it’s published, I can only really recommend everyone to give it a look and hopefully, we’ve teased some interesting stuff that will resonate with some of our listeners. So I think that concludes our main topic for today a little bit on sustainable public procurement requirements and EU law.

00:31:05 Marta Andhov

“For dessert, we wanted to chat about what summer is for academics. A very mysterious title, but let’s unpack it a bit.

00:31:12 Willem Janssen

“For sure. So, I think why it’s obviously topical is because we’ve just come out of summer. People have mostly come back, or those odd colleagues aside that leave for holidays very cleverly in September to avoid the heat or too many kids on holidays. What always puzzles me a bit is academic summers. You go to birthday parties and people say, ‘Oh, you academics, you have so many holiday days, or what are you working really hard?’ What’s happening, right? Well, then, on the contrary, I see many of my colleagues, and during my PhD, it was the same for me, that would use the summer to do research and to not really unwind. So, I thought, let’s give it a go. But maybe we can start with you. How did you unwind in the summer, or are you still hyped up? I suppose you’ve come back from six months in Australia, so you can’t complain?

00:32:14 Marta Andhov

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t do anything for six months. That’d be wonderful. But no, I think that you’re touching on one of these myths, I think, that people who are not in this sector kind of think that, you know, we don’t really have that much work, do we? But a very similar impression as yours when I look around, my colleagues work all the time. Several of my colleagues who are on holidays, they still reply to emails and things like that. So I think there are two or three elements that I think, as a young academic, I underestimated the need for total and absolute disconnect. I kind of always had this thing that, you know, ‘Oh, I want to progress. I want to do good. I need to be available. I need to be there. If I’m not there, the world will end’ type of thing, a bit of…

00:33:14 Willem Janssen

“This classic overachiever mindset that you sometimes feel in during your PhD, but perhaps in the assistant professor postdoc level, perhaps even more.

00:33:23 Marta Andhov

“More, and you know, there’s a part of me that kind of feels, and kind of feels like, you know, different seasons of your life, yeah, you need to push yourself. You need to prove yourself. Like, you know, I also don’t really prescribe to this overly new idea that everything needs to be very well-balanced. I think it’s unrealistic. I think different moments in life require different things, but I definitely always thought that having a laptop with me, if I open it once in a while every couple of days, that’s not really a big issue.

00:33:58 Willem Janssen

“Yeah. And I think my rule of thumb always is, you can work on the weekend, say you can work a second weekend, but if you’re working three weekends in a row, you really have to reevaluate what the hell you’re doing because then the workload is too much, right? You can push and you can work hard, but like, it needs to be in balance, but I think the problem is not overwork. The problem is your own boundaries. And I think that the last years have been more about setting boundaries because with our line of work, there is always work. You know what I mean? It will never be like one day you close your laptop, and it’s like, ‘Oh, I did everything.’ So, it’s about establishing boundaries, but also this summer, I definitely, over the last 2-3 years, enforced this notion that once per year, I have a longer break where I don’t take a computer. And actually, what I realized is going somewhere that does not have cell phone reception…

00:34:51 Marta Andhov

“Yeah, the great Australian Outback, where there literally is no cell phone reception, does wonders for my nervous system. I think it allows me to come back somehow refreshed. Also, I think you get to a point of managing people where you need a bit of a break from that too. But Carlos, yeah.”

00:35:11 Willem Janssen

“Yeah. And I think, sorry, just to add to that, I find that I need 3 weeks. The first week, I’m still thinking about work a lot. The second week, I’m starting to relax, and by the third week, I actually start thinking a lot more about work, but in a relaxed way where my mind is clearing a bit, and I feel so much more effective afterwards in doing new things or picking up old things.”

00:35:35 Marta Andhov

“The creativity starts to flow. I think I heard in some podcast or read somewhere that for you to really come up with new interesting ideas, you need to be bored. And the problem with social media and all these distractions we have right now is that you never give yourself the opportunity to be bored. But, going back to your point, similarly to you, I wrote my PhD pretty much through summers with peace and quiet. You don’t get interrupted, and so on. So I think while it is important to take a break, it doesn’t necessarily need to be in the summer.”

00:36:14 Marta Andhov

“This is probably the easiest. But I do think that when we have these breaks, it’s also easier to do research. So I understand why we, or other colleagues, tend to do a bit of research during that time because you’re just not getting all these different inputs and distractions.”

00:36:31 Willem Janssen

“And sometimes, I suppose, you don’t really have a choice but to do it then, right? Many of the contracts that we have in Europe give us, or to say, while you teach throughout the academic year, you run from class to class, sketching it a bit negatively. But there might be some bits and pieces in between, but really, it’s those summer months where you take your holidays. But there’s also still a little bit of time to do that.”

00:36:51 Willem Janssen

“So, it’s not just a choice, but also simply how the system is set up. And one thing that I struggle with, or at least that’s a struggle, I think, in many Dutch universities and somewhere across Europe, is the lengthening of the academic year. These seem to start later or finish late and start earlier, but I’m being compensated throughout the rest of the year, right? So then you really get into this squeeze of having to decide between holiday or research. And I think that’s problematic, particularly if your family circumstances don’t allow you to go outside of the normal holiday season.”

00:37:24 Marta Andhov

“Yeah, absolutely. So I think it really is about setting boundaries and dealing with the consequences. I think every choice you make has a price to be paid, but it’s important to figure out your own way. And the thing is also that every season of your academic career brings with itself different challenges. What I find these days is the luxury to have time for research.”

00:37:54 Willem Janssen

“Yeah, right. And I think, finally, what you’re implicitly alluding to a little bit is the different stages of your academic career, right? Perhaps if you’re more senior, you really feel like you’ve earned the right to have that holiday. And that’s something that we really should be getting rid of very quickly, this notion that the rat race we referred to earlier only allows holidays for those at the top. Everyone should have their breaks, whether in the summer or not, and it shouldn’t just be that the full professor can relax by the swimming pool while the PhD candidates look for scraps of bread around that swimming pool, right?”

00:38:42 Marta Andhov

“Absolutely. I think we did a pretty good job, considering we had a little bit of a break in this discussion.”

00:38:49 Willem Janssen

“I love it. Yes, we did a great job.”

00:38:51 Marta Andhov

“No, I think that, you know, I was thinking it would be a bit more rusty, but we got back into it quite easily.”

00:38:58 Willem Janssen

“Let us know if we were rusty or not, just leave it in the comments.”

00:39:03 Marta Andhov

“With those final words, we wrap up today’s episode. We talked about mandatory sustainability procurement requirements in EU law and the book that Willem co-edited with Roberto Caranta. For our dessert, we discussed what summer means for academics and the challenges in our profession, along with a few words on what we think could make it better.

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