Where foreign companies win public tenders in Europe
Among European countries with at least 1,000 award notices naming a winner, Ireland is where foreign companies win the largest share of public contracts: 19.3% of the 3,280 of its notices that name a winner country, published on TED from January to September 2026, named one registered in another country, most often one from the United Kingdom (458 notices). Across the 27 EU member states the share is 3.8%, 9,286 of 239,165 notices naming a winner. Smaller markets read higher still, on fewer notices naming a winner: Liechtenstein at 43.6% of 55 notices and Luxembourg at 24.8% of 568 notices. The lowest share: Bulgaria, 0.7%.
Data: TED, the EU Official Journal, harvested
The 30 countries, ranked
Every EU and EEA country, ordered by the share of its award notices won by a company registered in another country, January to September 2026. The share is taken over the notices that name at least one winner country, 90.6% of the 266,240 published. Countries printed at the same share sit in the order of their exact ones.
| # | Country | Award notices | Won from abroad | Most frequent foreign winners | Single bid | Median bids | Lots with a bid from another EEA country | Lots with a bid from outside the EEA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LiechtensteinLI | 61 | 43.6%24 of 55 | Switzerland 21, Austria 2, Germany 1 | 22.3%15 of 67 | 3 | not printedno lot carries the code | not printedno lot carries the code |
| 2 | LuxembourgLU | 603 | 24.8%141 of 568 | Belgium 40, Germany 31, France 24 | 25.8%182 of 704 | 3 | not printedcoverage 24.2% | not printedcoverage 24.2% |
| 3 | IrelandIE | 3,539 | 19.3%635 of 3,280 | United Kingdom 458, Germany 41, United States 22 | 21.2%545 of 2,564 | 3 | not printedcoverage 1.2% | not printedcoverage 1.2% |
| 4 | IcelandIS | 184 | 17.0%27 of 158 | Denmark 7, Norway 5, Sweden 4 | 18.7%32 of 171 | 3 | not printedcoverage 36.8% | not printedcoverage 36.8% |
| 5 | BelgiumBE | 4,517 | 16.4%655 of 3,986 | Netherlands 186, France 161, Germany 122 | 23.7%1,829 of 7,690 | 3 | not printedcoverage 3.3% | not printedcoverage 3.3% |
| 6 | DenmarkDK | 2,403 | 14.5%295 of 2,032 | Sweden 75, Germany 48, Norway 36 | 24.5%873 of 3,558 | 3 | 12.6%coverage 44.3% | 3.7%coverage 44.1% |
| 7 | AustriaAT | 4,006 | 13.0%490 of 3,761 | Germany 280, Switzerland 35, Estonia 24 | 26.0%1,165 of 4,480 | 3 | not printedcoverage 15.0% | not printedcoverage 15.0% |
| 8 | CyprusCY | 614 | 11.6%63 of 543 | Greece 43, Germany 4, France 4 | 53.8%375 of 696 | 1 | not printedcoverage 0.7% | not printedcoverage 0.7% |
| 9 | SwedenSE | 6,736 | 8.5%512 of 5,994 | Denmark 159, Norway 79, Finland 76 | 24.1%2,436 of 10,072 | 3 | not printedcoverage 2.0% | not printedcoverage 1.9% |
| 10 | EstoniaEE | 2,903 | 8.2%220 of 2,674 | Lithuania 50, Finland 49, Latvia 33 | 32.1%1,968 of 6,128 | 2 | not printedcoverage 11.3% | not printedcoverage 1.4% |
| 11 | NorwayNO | 2,477 | 7.7%159 of 2,058 | Sweden 57, Denmark 31, Germany 18 | 19.7%365 of 1,851 | 3 | not printedcoverage 10.3% | not printedcoverage 10.1% |
| 12 | MaltaMT | 690 | 7.0%37 of 524 | Italy 16, Germany 4, United Kingdom 4 | 28.6%136 of 474 | 3 | not printedcoverage 1.8% | not printedcoverage 1.8% |
| 13 | FinlandFI | 4,324 | 6.6%244 of 3,671 | Sweden 67, Germany 33, Denmark 26 | 16.6%846 of 5,089 | 4 | not printedcoverage 2.2% | not printedcoverage 2.2% |
| 14 | SlovakiaSK | 3,650 | 6.5%219 of 3,342 | Czechia 192, Poland 6, Austria 4 | 29.8%1,975 of 6,606 | 2 | 4.0%coverage 100.0% | 0.5%coverage 100.0% |
| 15 | LatviaLV | 5,053 | 5.8%255 of 4,353 | Lithuania 111, Estonia 48, Czechia 18 | 25.3%2,328 of 9,199 | 3 | 5.1%coverage 99.9% | 0.6%coverage 99.9% |
| 16 | SloveniaSI | 3,840 | 5.5%191 of 3,425 | Croatia 46, Austria 28, Germany 19 | 47.6%6,463 of 13,574 | 2 | 2.5%coverage 90.3% | 0.5%coverage 90.3% |
| 17 | LithuaniaLT | 6,504 | 4.2%246 of 5,832 | Germany 44, Latvia 28, Estonia 21 | 38.3%1,200 of 3,129 | 2 | not printedcoverage 0.2% | not printedcoverage 0.2% |
| 18 | NetherlandsNL | 6,713 | 4.1%252 of 6,117 | Germany 66, Belgium 61, United Kingdom 30 | 26.3%1,614 of 6,125 | 3 | not printedcoverage 1.2% | not printedcoverage 1.2% |
| 19 | HungaryHU | 3,547 | 3.8%115 of 3,020 | Germany 22, Austria 16, Czechia 13 | 39.1%3,755 of 9,597 | 2 | 2.2%coverage 99.9% | 0.5%coverage 99.9% |
| 20 | PortugalPT | 5,518 | 3.8%201 of 5,289 | Spain 106, Germany 32, Netherlands 11 | 45.9%4,896 of 10,656 | 2 | 4.6%coverage 71.7% | 0.5%coverage 71.7% |
| 21 | CroatiaHR | 6,150 | 3.7%224 of 6,031 | Slovenia 102, Italy 22, Germany 15 | 27.5%7,965 of 28,892 | 2 | 6.5%coverage 100.0% | 0.3%coverage 100.0% |
| 22 | PolandPL | 37,161 | 3.3%1,108 of 32,861 | Hungary 391, Germany 283, Czechia 107 | 56.5%56,625 of 100,081 | 1 | 2.7%coverage 85.6% | 0.4%coverage 85.5% |
| 23 | CzechiaCZ | 20,597 | 3.1%600 of 19,034 | Slovakia 264, Germany 95, Poland 59 | 44.5%13,628 of 30,605 | 2 | 3.5%coverage 80.0% | 0.5%coverage 80.0% |
| 24 | ItalyIT | 13,411 | 3.0%313 of 10,311 | Latvia 61, Germany 59, Ireland 38 | 35.5%3,736 of 10,516 | 2 | not printedcoverage 7.2% | not printedcoverage 6.9% |
| 25 | GermanyDE | 44,344 | 2.7%1,142 of 40,792 | Austria 283, Netherlands 143, Switzerland 106 | 20.8%11,031 of 53,002 | 3 | 5.8%coverage 49.0% | 1.6%coverage 48.1% |
| 26 | GreeceGR | 2,903 | 2.4%65 of 2,700 | Austria 10, France 8, Germany 7 | 55.9%3,714 of 6,643 | 1 | 7.9%coverage 79.0% | 1.0%coverage 79.0% |
| 27 | FranceFR | 23,039 | 1.8%418 of 22,147 | Germany 108, Belgium 50, Netherlands 43 | 18.9%6,536 of 34,516 | 3 | not printedcoverage 8.7% | not printedcoverage 8.5% |
| 28 | SpainES | 20,921 | 1.7%347 of 19,754 | Germany 61, France 43, Italy 43 | 38.0%12,915 of 33,909 | 2 | 2.1%coverage 44.0% | 1.7%coverage 43.8% |
| 29 | RomaniaRO | 18,161 | 1.2%222 of 17,130 | Italy 35, Austria 23, Turkey 22 | 33.5%101,447 of 302,312 | 2 | 5.5%coverage 99.9% | 261 of 302,285 lotscoverage 99.9% |
| 30 | BulgariaBG | 11,671 | 0.7%76 of 9,994 | Germany 11, Russia 8, Czechia 7 | 45.9%7,514 of 16,363 | 2 | 0.3%coverage 99.9% | 11 of 16,362 lotscoverage 99.9% |
"Won from abroad" counts a notice once when at least one of its winners is registered in a country that is none of its buyer countries, so a local subsidiary of a foreign group counts as domestic. The single-bid share and the median are counted per lot. The bid-origin shares rest on two optional codes and are printed only where at least 40% of a country's lots carry them and at least 30 lots do; the coverage under each says how many carry them. Every share is truncated, never rounded up.
Who the foreign winners are
In some markets one foreign country takes most of what is won from abroad. In Slovakia, 192 of the 219 notices won from abroad named a winner from Czechia. In Ireland, 458 of the 635 notices won from abroad named a winner from the United Kingdom. In Austria, 280 of the 490 notices won from abroad named a winner from Germany. A notice with winners from two foreign countries counts once for each, so that column can add up to more than the notices won from abroad.
Counted in notices rather than as a share, the most contracts won from abroad were in Germany (1,142 notices, 2.7%) and Poland (1,108 notices, 3.3%), the two largest markets on TED by number of notices.
Where the bids come from
A winner is where a procedure ends; the bids show who tried. eForms gives an award notice two optional codes for that, tenders received from another EEA country and tenders received from outside the EEA, and 14 of the 30 countries fill them in on enough lots to be read: at least 40% of their lots.
Among those, the share of lots drawing at least one bid from another EEA country runs from 12.6% in Denmark to 0.3% in Bulgaria. Bids from outside the EEA reach 3.7% of lots at most, in Denmark. France, Italy and Sweden carry the codes on too few lots for a share to describe the country, so the table prints their coverage instead.
How many tenders draw a single bid
The same notices say how many tenders each lot drew. Among countries with at least 1,000 lots, a single bid is commonest in Poland, 56.5% of 100,081 lots, and rarest in Finland, 16.6% of 5,089. The table gives every country's share and its median.
The single-bid page breaks the same count down by CPV division and code, over January to July 2026, when 35.9% of the lots awarded through TED drew one tender. It covers two months fewer, so a country's share can differ slightly between the two.
What it means for a supplier
In each of the 30 countries, contracts went to companies registered abroad during the period, and in each of them those were a minority of the notices: from 0.7% in Bulgaria to 43.6% in Liechtenstein.
The share counts winners by the country they are registered in. A foreign group that bids through a company it owns in the buyer's country is counted as local, so the figure is the share won directly from abroad, not the share won by foreign capital.
The highest shares sit in small markets: 3 of the 5 highest are countries with fewer than 1,000 notices naming a winner. Germany, the largest market on TED with 44,344 award notices, has 2.7% of its notices naming a winner won from abroad.
These are the contracts published on TED, which mostly carries procurement above the EU thresholds; below them, notices stay on national portals and are not measured here. The thresholds say which contracts reach TED, and where an EU company may bid names the instrument that opens each market outside the Union.
The European Court of Auditors, cited in the Commission's proposal for an EU Public Procurement Act, found "that the participation of SMEs and cross-border bidders remained limited" (COM(2026) 590, explanatory memorandum). The proposal, article by article.
How this is counted
The source is TED, the EU Official Journal: 270,865 contract award notices in eForms published from January to September 2026, harvested from the TED search API in two files (1 January 2026 to 31 July 2026, fetched on 8 September 2026; 1 August 2026 to 30 September 2026, fetched on 12 October 2026) and merged by publication number with none counted twice. 266,240 have a buyer in one of the 30 countries. A notice belongs to the first buyer country it names, and the 4,625 from buyers outside the EEA (Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the candidate countries among them) are left out.
A notice counts as won from abroad when at least one of its winners is registered in a country that is none of its buyer countries, so a joint purchase by two countries is not foreign to either. It is counted per notice and not per lot, because the winner countries of a notice do not line up with its lots. The country is the winning organisation's as the notice states it: a local subsidiary of a foreign group counts as domestic, and the figure measures direct cross-border awards only.
The bid figures are counted per lot, on the total of tenders received (eForms BT-759, read where BT-760 says it counts tenders). Lots declaring zero tenders on an award notice, which cannot happen, and lots above 500, which are amounts typed into the count, are dropped: 95,177 and 80 of them in these 30 countries. Quote the median; the mean is in the files.
The two origin codes are optional, and where buyers leave them out a share would describe whoever filled them in rather than the country. A share is printed only where at least 40% of a country's lots carry the code and at least 30 lots do, and the coverage is always shown.
Every share rests on at least 30 lots, or notices for the shares counted per notice. Shares and means are truncated to one decimal, never rounded up. There are no euro figures: a TED value mixes framework ceilings with contract values across thirty legal regimes. TED mostly carries procurement above the EU thresholds, so each figure describes the large end of a national market and not the whole of it.
The data, to check it
Every figure in the table, with the five foreign winner countries of each market, the counts behind each share and the method, is in two files under CC BY 4.0: ted-cross-border-2026-01_2026-09.csv and ted-cross-border-2026-01_2026-09.json. Both are generated from the same count as this page.
Frequently asked questions
01Which European countries award the most public contracts to foreign companies?
By share, Ireland among the larger markets: 19.3% of its 3,280 award notices naming a winner, January to September 2026, named one registered in another country. Liechtenstein (43.6% of 55) and Luxembourg (24.8% of 568) read higher on far fewer notices. By count, Germany (1,142 notices) and Poland (1,108 notices). Across the 27 EU member states the share is 3.8%. Counted on every contract award notice published on TED, the EU Official Journal.
02What share of EU public contracts goes to foreign companies?
3.8% of the 239,165 award notices naming a winner in the 27 member states, January to September 2026, named at least one winner registered in another country: 9,286 notices. With Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway it is 3.9%. A local subsidiary of a foreign group counts as domestic, so this is the share won directly from abroad.
03Where in Europe can a foreign company win public tenders?
Measured on what was awarded, in all 30 EU and EEA countries: each gave contracts to companies registered in another country from January to September 2026. The share runs from 0.7% in Bulgaria to 43.6% in Liechtenstein; among the larger markets it is highest in Ireland (19.3%), Belgium (16.4%) and Denmark (14.5%). Which instrument opens a market to a company from outside the Union is set out country by country on the page on where an EU company may bid.
04How many EU tenders get only one bid, by country?
Counted per lot on the award notices, January to September 2026: among countries with at least 1,000 lots, Poland has the highest single-bid share at 56.5% and Finland the lowest at 16.6%. The table on this page gives all 30 countries with the median number of bids. Across the Union, 35.9% of the lots awarded through TED drew one tender from January to July 2026; the single-bid page breaks that down by CPV code.
05How often do bids come from other EU countries?
Where the notices carry the codes, Denmark has the highest share of lots drawing a bid from another EEA country, 12.6%, and Bulgaria the lowest, 0.3%. The codes are optional: 14 of the 30 countries fill them in on at least 40% of their lots, and only those are given a share.
06Does a foreign company's local subsidiary count as a foreign winner?
No. The winner's country is the country of the winning organisation as the award notice states it, so a subsidiary registered in the buyer's country counts as domestic. The figures measure contracts won directly from abroad.
07Where does this data come from?
From TED, the EU Official Journal: 270,865 contract award notices published from January to September 2026, harvested from the TED search API on 8 September 2026 and 12 October 2026. The buyer country is the first one a notice names, the winner country is the one each notice states, and both files are published on this page under CC BY 4.0.
How to cite
TRINTA, "Cross-border public procurement in Europe, by country", TED, the EU Official Journal, harvested 12 October 2026, CC BY 4.0, https://trinta.ai/cross-border-public-procurement-europe (accessed [date]).
Sources
- TED search API, Publications Office of the European UnionContract award notices queried by publication date. Read on 12 October 2026.
- ted-awards-2026.json215,323 contract award notices published 1 January 2026 to 31 July 2026, fetched on 8 September 2026.
- ted-awards-2026-08-09.json55,542 contract award notices published 1 August 2026 to 30 September 2026, fetched on 12 October 2026.
- About TED, Publications Office of the European UnionRead on 12 October 2026.
- Proposal for a Regulation on public contracts and concessions (Public Procurement Act)COM(2026) 590 final, ST 12969/26, explanatory memorandum, section 1. Read on 12 October 2026.