The European legislation on public procurement has been modified over the past few

years to favor "green" public procurement. This raises the question of the goal of public

procurement regulation: while the best value for money is traditionnally considered as

the main concern of public procurement procedure, secondary goals have kept on growing

(support for SMEs, environmental policy, ...) over the years. We use data from TED

database to investigate whether environmental clauses in public procurement contracts are

associated with lower competition indicators. Exploring French public procurement contracts

between 2016 and 2020, our first results show that green contractual clauses are

associated with a higher number of candidates during the call for tenders, a lower competitive

pressure and a lower ability of SMEs to win. However, the weight allocated to

the green criterium is crucial in the analysis: when it is low, the number of competitors

increases and this has positive effect on prices. When this weight is high, there are a fewer

bidders, a lower price competitive pressure but a higher probability that a SME wins.