Bread with Norrgott gets served every day.

The European union (EU) forbids its members from favoring one country’s entrepreneurs over those from other EU member states in their public procurement. However, it is common that local policymakers want to promote the businesses close to home. This may lead to a conflict regarding who possesses the authority over the other: The EU or local policymakers? This study aims to chart the existence of such a potential conflict around public procurement in regards to locally produced foods. Unlike earlier studies on this subject, this study provides a grand set of data using the food policies of 250 Swedish municipalities. By doing so, a deeper scientific discussion is enabled surrounding multi-level governance and valid law. In addition to that, this study also proposes a conceptual apparatus for further technical precision discussing this field. Several interesting findings in this study are worth mentioning. One essential finding is that the majority of Swedish municipalities in one way or another show signs of wanting to promote local entrepreneurs via their food policies. More than twenty of them go so far as to point out specific product groups that shall be purchased from local entrepreneurs, such as Bjurholm’s municipality which states that the locally produced butter Norrgott shall be served daily. Furthermore this study tracks whether the municipalities’ expressions surrounding locally produced foods differ or not depending on the municipality’s size, number of agriculturists per capita or if the municipality is governed by the Swedish agrarian party Centerpartiet. None of these factors are found to affect the municipalities’ expressions with enough statistical significance – despite being intuitive explanations. Therefore one of this study’s most essential results is that more research is required to determine what causes the variation in contracting authorities’ expressions regarding locally produced foods, whether it can be contributed to any other systematic factor or local initiatives by individuals.